


goodness and mercy shall follow me

by MissKate



Series: to cherish what remains [2]
Category: Elfquest
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Death, F/F, F/M, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Mind Rape, Multi, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 63,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4835006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissKate/pseuds/MissKate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shen Shen and Osek learn to navigate the Abode, and all that entails. The Wolfriders and the Sun Folk become neighbours, and after some time, the quest begins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a table in the presence of my enemies

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, attempting to mitigate some of WaRP's bad science, as well as, well, they're racism. There's a lot of minor slice of life stuff, btw, and there may be some flashbacks in later chapters, I know some people don't like that.

She and Marek, who'd sworn that she felt the baby helping, had taken a full eight and four days to climb out of the rubble, to find a lonely female zwoot, a few empty waterjars, and enough fabric to fashion a saddle, some clothes to cover them from the sun, and enough bandages to cover Shen Shen's leg, much of which they'd actually brought with them as they dodged dead bodies under the rubble. There was also a dagger, something Rayek must have lost during the quake, but it had already proven its worth.

“The water must be boiling,” she told Marek, as they built the fire, zwoot dung, and the remains of trees. “The dagger must be red-hot. Wrap your hands before you touch it.”

Marek nodded, following her words, which were actually her mother's words, from stores of wisdom that had been put away after Leetah's birth.

The dead flesh was cut from the living with the hot knife. Then, as Shen Shen clung to a waterjar, and screamed through her teeth, Marek laid the blade, red hot, on the wounds.

“Well done,” Shen Shen praised the little mother. “Well done. I feel much better.”

Then, shamefully, she had fainted.

She'd come to find Marek smoking a pig, several lizards, a few quail, and a rabbit on the fire, and filling both waterjars.

“I don't know how I did it,” Marek admitted, when asked. “I would just lie there, as still as I could. I was lucky with the bristleboar, a rock fell on it. I waited until the others came close to me, then I just stabbed them.”

“We're lucky you did,” Shen Shen sighed. Marek had also found the time to fashion a crutch from an old tree, and she used this to get around, trying not to think of the ache in her foot, which was still buried under a mountain.

The trail went north, zwoot prints and elf prints.

“When do you suppose they left?” Marek asked, wistfully.

“Not too long ago, I suppose,” Shen Shen sighed.

“They might have waited, just a bit longer,” Marek fretted, hands on her belly. “Poor Ahkren.”

She burst into tears directly after that, and, unable to think of what else to do, Shen Shen joined her.

Leetah, was she buried under this stone? Was she out in the desert, grieving for her sister? Mother? Father?

Did Rayek live, or had he perished?

The world felt flat and colourless, after they finished. Shen Shen made Marek drink some water, and took some herself, to fight the headache sure to follow.

Marek stood up, and began to roll up the blankets.

“We should go tomorrow,” she said, wincing.

“I think we should wait,” Shen Shen said, thinking of Marek. “I'm worried about the baby.”

“If we wait, we risk losing them,” Marek objected. “I'm fine. I'm sure baby will be alright, too.”

Shen Shen nodded. After all, what choice did they have?

...

The wind was soft, and almost cool, as they piled blankets, quickly stitched together, with leather laces, on top of the zwoot, a relatively small, sweet creature. The water jugs were put in make-shift bags on either side of her. Enough to last a while, at any rate, padded in by the smoked meat. Marek gave the knife to Shen Shen, who took it mindlessly.

They had a small supply of herbs from the mountains. Ache-heal and mother-weed, for Shen Shen's leg, and in case Marek's milk shouldn't prove sufficient.

In any case, they couldn't delay any longer.

The trail was broad and easy to follow. Shen Shen watched for any foot print she might recognize, or the sign of a trailing robe or skirt, but everything was too mixed up. Every so often she and Marek would find odd bits of detritus. Ruffel's earring, making Shen Shen think of her childhood play mates, one of Ahnshen's needles, that Marek thoughtfully packed away, a piece of cloth that neither of them recognized, that went to lengthen the reins. Other bits and bobs, the remnants of a small, but resilient civilization.

They were making better time than the others, passing their old camp at the sun's three quarter height, Shen Shen noticed with a strange pride. Leetah and Mother and Father would be so proud of her. They did stop to snag a few more pieces of salvage, still mostly small things, including an old bracelet of Ahdri's. There, Shen Shen saw a pair of broad footprints, together with a small round circle.

“Father's staff!” She pointed them out excitedly to Marek, who laughed.

“The Sun Folk will be with him,” she giggled. “And soon we'll be with the Sun Folk!”

But optimism proved immature. The next day the sky darkened over, the sun turned orange, and a heavy wind began to sweep.

“Sandstorm!” Marek yelled over the wind, pointing to the west.

It took them less time than she would have thought possible to set up the tent and hide with the zwoot in its shadowy interior. It was some what hot, and Marek drank cupfuls of water, while Shen Shen gave it to the zwoot in handfuls. Supper would be a handful of dried meat, each, and one last glass of water.

But Marek suddenly grabbed her belly, and moaned, even more so than she had done in the past few days. At first Shen Shen paid it no mind, thinking it was another false contraction, but they came stronger and faster.

“I think-” Marek gasped, but Shen Shen interrupted.

“I know!” She helped Marek to a makeshift birthing chair, little more than a pile of cloth. “Think how wonderful it will be, to bring the Sun Folk new life.”

“New life,” Marek looked, suddenly, unexpectedly, sad. Then she winced, and moaned through another pain.

It was a hard birth. Had Shen Shen not been so ill herself, she might have noticed, but she was pre-occupied between this, and too much hope. Then, too, it seemed that all had gone well, a little girl coming into the world with relative speed, as Shen Shen laid in her in her mother's arms, and neatly bit through the life cord.

“There,” she sighed happily, then turned and began to drop herbs and hot stones from the fire into a cup of water. One never knew when mother-weed was needed, and it still made a sweet refreshing drink.

“I'm going to name her Ahleki,” Marek said, staring at the baby as if she could never see enough.

“”Light In The Rocks”?” Shen Shen asked, grinning. “It's perfect.”

“Yes, perfect,” Marek sighed, and waved away the tea. “You drink it, Shen Shen.”

Mothers weren't the only ones to drink the tea, as it also eased aches and pains, and Shen Shen's leg was sore enough that she didn't refuse.

Before long, warm, with the wind howling outside, the zwoot snorting and occasionally farting in her sleep, and Marek singing a lullabye to Ahleki.

“Sleep well, all night, and play all day...”

It was as old as the village itself. Leetah had sung it to Shen Shen when she was small, and had used to run from their parents' hut to her sister's after nightmares. It sent her to sleep as easily now as it had then, and she dreamed that she found Leetah inside a cactus that she had somehow made a home of.

The next morning, the storm had stopped, and she knew she would have to dig their way free, and said several things that she suspected would have made Rayek blush.

“The trail is probably gone by now, Marek,” she sighed. “I suppose we'll just have to keep travelling north. See where it takes us.”

The only answer was the sound of the zwoot.

“Marek?”

Marek was lying on the pile of blankets she'd given birth on, long, black braid lying beside her. The baby sighed, little sleeping noises.

Marek's lips had already begun to lose colour. Her face wasn't peaceful, as Shen Shen had been told it should be. It was slack, as if it were a badly painted portrait. Then, she had never seen anyone die.

Shen Shen confirmed the truth with a touch. Marek's skin was cold, her breath gone.

Mother-weed, taken again, would start the flow of milk, Shen Shen knew this. She couldn't wait, the baby was stirring.

She only made the smallest shroud. Ahleki would need all the rags she could get, they wouldn't be able to wash anything for who knew how long. She took her jewelry, too, for when Ahleki might have need of her mother, and bundled it away with Ahnshen's needle and Ruffel's earring. She dug the grave with her bare hands, and laid Marek in with dry eyes. For Marek, at least, it was over. She could be with her lifemate.

She didn't make a sound as she changed the sobbing baby, and laid her against a still empty breast. It wasn't until the tent was struck, and the zwoot loaded, and she looked out into the bare, empty desert, which now looked as if no elf had ever set foot there, let alone an entire half village, trekking who knew where, that the lonely enormity of their situation hit her, as if the emptiness of the desert had entered her soul.

...

“Well, that's when I found you,” Shen Shen smiled absently over her shoulder.

Osek wondered if smiles were habitual for her. It had been so long since he had smiled, himself, or seen an elfin smile, he had begun to wonder if they were mistaken, and there had never been such things as smiles and laughter.

Not since Mekda-, Well, not for many years, had he had such charming company. Shen Shen could be melancholic, but buried herself with fussing, over him, or Ahleki. She seemed happier distracting herself, losing her own grief in other people's needs.

As for Ahleki, Osek wasn't well acquainted with babies. He'd been captured before having any of his own, and as the years passed, Greymung kept him and Ekuar well segregated from the trolls, until Osek had begun to suspect their very existence was some kind of royal secret.

But Ahleki, only a few days old, was possessed of shining dark eyes, an oddly solemn, contemplative look, and a soft cap of feathery black hair. He and she couldn't do much together, so they mostly lay still in whatever shade Shen Shen could find, or make for them, while she steered the zwoot, or made camp, or cooked dinner, and watched each other. He would send to her, nothing important, just thoughts on the sky, or the sand, or on how fresh and good the air smelled.

“Osek, look!”

Shen Shen was sitting up straighter, even drawing her one knee under her. She pointed excitedly ahead of herself, to a shadow in the cliffs.

“It's an opening!” She crowed. “By the sun, it's an opening! The Sun Folk must have gone through there, surely.”

She urged the zwoot on carelessly, until they were at its edge, then more quickly into its shadow. Within, the walls were narrow and winding, with whistling little winds. It was beautiful, with purples and reds, sandstone in ribbons.

They came across a stream, to Shen Shen's delight, and, after refilling their water jugs, Osek shaped more water to the surface, and created a run off that they could use to wash themselves and their clothes.

“How exciting!” Shen Shen exclaimed, over and over, clearly delighting in the novelty of immersing one's self in cool water, as opposed to hot. “Osek, you are a wonder!”

Ahleki was less enthused, making her displeasure known when bathed.

After some time, they left the stream behind, with Shen Shen's insistence that her people were most likely just around the corner pulling them on, wet clothes drying damply on the zwoot's back. Shen Shen's optimism was contagious, and he found himself looking ahead as well.

“And Leetah, she'll patch us both up in no time. Just wait, she's like no healer you've ever known. Savah's lifemate was a rockshaper, too, she'll be so glad to meet you. And my father, Anatim, he'll be so pleased to see us...”

They were dangerously low on food. The water sloshed perilously under the swift pace of the zwoot. None of that seemed to matter to Shen Shen, as she raced the sun across the sky in the little canyon, to meet the ghosts around the corner.

Finally, when the sun began to duck dangerously low, leaving long, trailing shadows as a clue to the true time, they emerged from the canyon, onto a low, long plain, rimmed by hills to the east south, open and golden to the west and north.

It was empty. Even far off, in the great distance, only small patches of trees broke the starkness of the yellow plains and the blue sky.

It was the time of year when the night still brought chill to the air, Osek thought, idly, and they were probably just in time for the new green.

Shen Shen stood up on the zwoot, who did little more than flick her ears irritably over it, and scanned the horizon, silently.

There were no tents, nor smoke in the distance. There were no footsteps, no ripped pieces of scarf, or robe. They were alone, in a rapidly darkening, alien land. The air was far colder here, damp and with a rising wind.

“They're not- They're not here,” Shen Shen stuttered. She fell in a graceful slip off the back of the zwoot, and stumbled a few clumsy steps. “They're not here.”

She kept walking, limping on her crutch, but finally dropped onto her knee, staring away from him and Ahleki, out onto the plain.

The baby fussed in her sleep, and Osek rubbed her little back gently, cooing into her perfect little ears. He was looking away when he heard it.

It seemed to come from the earth itself. In fact, Osek reached with his shaping when he first heard it, sure it had come from the ground.

...

Shen Shen almost didn't recognize her own voice, coming from her chest, deep inside herself. It was an almost unelfin groan, that rose in volume until she was screaming, a loud, long wail that only died with her breath.

Then again.

And again.

She stopped when she heard Ahleki crying. Osek was trying to hush her, rocking her to and fro. He wasn't very good at it yet.

She saw a bit of mother-weed out of the corner of her eye, and cut it. Most likely she wouldn't need it again until Ahleki was weaned, but it never hurt to be careful.

Ahleki quieted as Shen Shen began to nurse her. It was nearly dark.

“We'll camp here,” she said, tonelessly. Osek was determinedly wriggling down from the zwoot, who had decided this was a good place to lie down. It might have been funny.

They built a fire, and pitched their makeshift tent. Strange, unknown animals made chirping, clicking sounds at the edge of light, and Osek, missing an eye, teeth, one ear, and several fingers, looked like a story from the time before the village.

After some time, the story came out. Three young adventurers, sneaking away in the night. The discovery of the High One's lost home, the Palace. The sudden attack, capture. Defiance, torture. Escape and a promise

“My people,” he sighed. “They lived far to the north. We might still find them. Or their descendants.”

Shen Shen thought about it.

“Osek,” she said, finally, feeling as if she shouldn't. “You said, you and your friends, you met the High Ones?”

“A few,” he shrugged. “They were old, even in our time, but gentle. At the same time, though, they weren't like us. They were distant, always far away.”

“Savah was the oldest elf in our village,” Shen Shen put Ahleki in her cradle-swing, made from an old blanket, and some sticks. “She was tall, twice the size of anyone else. But the High Ones have all been dead since long before she was born.”

“It may all be in vain,” Osek agreed, drawing further into his cloak. “They may have died, or been slaughtered and scattered by trolls, or humans.”

Just as her people may have been left behind, under a sandstorm, she thought.

“But they, or their descendants, may be somewhere beyond the plains,” he continued. “They may have reclaimed the Palace by now. Or they may have forgotten it. Or perhaps there are others. Elves beyond our knowledge.”

She sighed, and looked upward, into the stars. Other elves. Trolls, humans, animals.

“We have no choice,” she agreed. “We'll go North.”

...

After some moons, Ahleki had gone from an almost shapeless baby(Shen Shen had delivered enough to know they were all like that) to a giggling, gurgling little thing that Shen Shen would leave behind long enough to go hunting with her little dagger. She was good enough to bring down little fat rabbits, and diggers, and once, happily, a deer that had stumbled too close to her hiding place. The hide, cleaned and stretched, made sandals for her and boots for Osek. Less elegant than Shanseh's delicate slippers of silk and doeskin, but her shoes had long since worn out, and Osek claimed that his had been gone for years. Osek himself made snares, which also caught small game, so meat at dinner became meat at breakfast. Shen Shen saved as much as she could, drying it on racks on the zwoot's back. The rabbitskins were saved, too, to make warm blankets that Osek swore would be more than welcome in the coming White Cold.

Shen Shen, used to the desert heat, wiped her hand in the warm, wet air of the plains, and wondered if she would ever be cool again. Even night brought no respite, with the heat only growing more oppressive.

It seemed that the plains agreed with Osek, however, or perhaps that was just freedom, and food. He was filling out, bit by bit, both by meat, and the roots and plants, the few that they recognized, which supplemented their diet. There were no longer so many lines on his face, although his hair showed no signs of filling in. He was stronger, too, and had begun to make them nightly shelters of whatever stone was available, which they left each morning. He simply told her other travelers would come their way, and perhaps need their little homes.

The plains stretched out before them, and behind them, broken by little copses of trees. At first Shen Shen had been fascinated, by their size, by the hard, sharp leaves, and the long, soft ones, by the diversity, but now they were only a brief respite from the hot sun.

They wove hats from grasses that grew taller than Shen Shen, and even made Alehki a sun shade. The zwoot shed so much fur that Shen Shen made a crude spindle and began to spin a rough yarn.

And yet, day and after day, nothing. Not even a glimmer of old magics, or a whisper of smoke.

Everything changed one evening, after Osek had erected his rock house, and the fire had been lit to boil a rabbit and some roots. They had settled in, with the stone bowls that, like the house, they would likely leave behind in the morning. The sun had finally set, and a blue twilight haze had settled over the world.

Ahleki was settled on a bed of wildflowers and rabbit fur, playing with a doll that Shen Shen had wastefully sewn from a few scraps of cloth. Shen Shen watched the baby with an idle pride. She had never been fond of children, her passion lay with the bringing of the baby into the world, but Ahleki was different from most children. Or possibly she wasn't, and she was the first baby Shen Shen had spent much time with, but it was still a joy to watch her grow, and change. Already she was speaking her own little words, and making motions to try to tell them which direction to go in.

Suddenly there was a great flurry of noise, and the zwoot honked a warning. Shen Shen caught her crutch under one arm, and drew her dagger with the other, while Osek wrapped Ahleki up, pulling her, and himself to the back of the hut.

The people in the door way stopped, and gaped at her for a moment.

Shen Shen's first instinct was to stab at them. It was clear, from their round ears and small eyes, what they were. Humans, the same that had driven Savah and the Ancestors from their little home in the Green Growing Place. They would as soon eat an elf as look at her.

But they were a maid and a lad. No, man and woman, and the woman's belly was swollen with child. She was caught up in the man's arms, and crying out.

Shen Shen made her choice in a moment.

“Hot water, Osek,” she commanded. “And shape us a stool, will you?”

She urged the humans in with signs as she did so. They entered, the man with a quiet skepticism that disappeared as she popped a bowl of soup into his hands, and sat the woman down.

“Shen Shen,” she pushed herself into the woman's field of view, and smiled as broadly as she could. “Shen Shen.”

The woman, sweat pouring down her face, smiled, and tapped her own chest.

“Naksima.”

“Well, Naksima,” Shen Shen pulled the woman's leather skirt up. “Let's see.”

The baby was coming, but not too quickly. She would have time, then.

“Boil that water,” she ordered, tersely, washing her hands. “And give me wet cloths.”

The man stood up, asking questions with words that Shen Shen didn't understand, but in a tone that made her roll her eyes.

“Fire,” she took the man's arm, and made motions to the fire. “Must be BIG. Understand?”

It took a few minutes, but he soon had the idea, and was out searching for wood. Naksima was laughing when Shen Shen returned to her, and they shared a look that needed no translation.

It took all night. The man, Amrok, bumped his head once, and Osek reshaped the ceiling. Shen Shen had to nurse Ahleki once, and the zwoot tried to poke her head in to see what was going on.

Naksima gave birth near dawn, a healthy boy, already as big as Ahleki. The afterbirth passed in moments, and at Naksima's consent, Osek put it in the dirt.

Amrok brought in blankets of hide and fur, and stared in wonder at his mate and son, long after Naksima fell asleep. He wiped at his eyes, and looked so much like every father Shen Shen had ever had to shove out of a hut that she wanted to cry, too.

They all fell asleep not long after the birth. Elf, or human, it hardly seemed to matter, anymore. There was new life and exhaustion.

...

“Rayek!”

Maleen stood on one of the stones that dotted the vast plains, pointing out into the distance.

“Dashers,” she said, biting her lip in concentration. “And buffalo, looks like a little watering hole.”

“Ah,” Zhantee sighed. “Everyone needs to come to the watering hole.”

“And something huge,” Maleen added, shading her eyes. “Great Sun, it's bigger than the zwoots.”

Rayek floated himself up to her side. It was still difficult, but was becoming easier the more he did it. They were right, trees intermingled with the animals, a sure sign of a pond, or one of the small lakes that seemed to spring from no where.

“Maybe we could just wait by the lake for prey,” Halek was having trouble with the heat, which was wet and heavy on them, like a steam bath. He'd eschewed robes and tunics for a light leather shirt that tied over one shoulder, of the Wolfrider Moonshade's making, and had tied a scarf tightly over his long black hair. He looked like an uncomfortable cross between a Wolfrider and a Sun lad.

“Stop moaning, Halek.” Maleen leapt gracefully off the rock, looking no more burdened by the sun now, in her black silk laces, than she had in the Sun Village. “We do too much near the lake, now, and they won't come near it again for a long time.”

“You come up here,” Rayek held out his hand, and helped Halek climb up. “We need someone keeping watch.”

“My thanks,” Halek murmured, sighing.

“Take this,” Zhantee passed up a woven shade. “Ahnshen's worried about you over heating.”

“Halek would need to move to overheat,” Maleen teased. “Lazybones!”

Halek made a rude gesture, which only made Maleen laugh more, until Rayek hushed her.

The grass made a forest of its own. It was nearly a half elf taller than the tallest of them, and when Maleen grasped handfuls of the strongest blades she could climb them, putting herself just high enough to sight their target and slide down.

Zhantee was in poor shape today, rustling through the leaves and grasses. Rayek wished he had taken Halek instead. He tried to be patient, and it was easier than he had expected, until they parted the grass, and Zhantee snapped a twig.

In an instant, the dashers were off, and the shagbacks followed, shaking their horns. The new creature, a slow, stinking beast, showed off its claws lazily, roaring in a low, rumbling tone.

“Curse it, Zhantee, your feet are as much clay as your pots!”

It was unfair, and he knew it was unfair as soon as he said it. Zhantee wasn't naturally talented at the hunt, but his willingness to work and learn usually carried the day over those with an inborn talent. But they hadn't seen meat in seven days, and he refused to humble himself before the Wolfriders, who had the temerity to visit the village and make “helpful” comments on their skills.

“Shut it!” Maleen had already raised her spear, aiming at the beast. “Come on, you two!”

They almost had it. It was slow, horribly so, and Maleen's spear was gut deep in it, when a lucky blow of its claws cut through both her ribbons and her side. She dropped to one knee, groaning, and Zhantee and Rayek were distracted long enough to go flying.

The beast turned its attention back to Maleen. Rayek watched with horror as it raised its hand to a killing blow. Maleen raised her head, and clutched a dagger pounded out of an old shovel.

The blow never met. The beast's hand snapped backward in mid-air, and Maleen leapt as it cried out in agony, driving her knife deep into its eye.

It took a few minutes to die, shuddering out breath painfully. Rayek took Maleen's torn ribbons and part of his own loincloth to make a make shift bandage.

“Run to the village,” he ordered Zhantee. “Bring Leetah, and tell them we need help to carry our kill back.”

Zhantee nodded, and raced away.

“Wonder what snapped the beast's hand?” Maleen asked, idly.

Rayek shrugged. “Wasn't me. You?”

“I think I'd know if I was doing magic. Oh!” She winced as he tightened the bandage.

They lay still, the day pouring hot sunlight over them.

Maleen was his mother's cousin, and Rayek noted, sitting beside her, that they had the same long black hair, and heart-shaped face. Hers was meditative now.

“You weren't fair to Zhantee,” she said, after a few minutes of silence.

He winced. “I know.”

“Do you?” She asked. “Zhantee worships you. More than anyone else in the village. He's always been too shy to even speak to you, the great Rayek, the Hunter, the magic user.”

“I'll apologize to him,” he assured her.

She sat up, grimacing in pain, and held up the end to her ribbon shirt, where it had been torn by the beast.

“Rayek, can you sew this back together?”

“Yes,” he answered slowly. Her wounds hadn't looked that bad, was she sick from loss of blood?

“So, when you do, will it be as if it never was torn.” She held the pieces together. “Is that it?”

“No,” he ran a hand over her forehead. Hot, but Maleen tended to run that way.

Maleen pulled his hand away from her face, and looked into his eyes. “Words are like those claws, Rayek. They tear holes. You can mend them, but the stitches show where the holes were. That can never be changed. Do you understand me?”

“I told you I was sorry,” he grumbled, feeling as if he were a child, being scolded for shirking chores.

“You have always been special,” Maleen sighed, looking to the beast. “Just as Zhantee and I have always been ordinary. Being special, magical, a hunter, it's made people give way to you. Even when they probably shouldn't.”

She didn't speak after that, and not a few moments passed before Leetah burst out of the grass on the back of the huge beast that had adopted her, followed later by a zwoot, and enough villagers to carry two of the beasts back. And two Wolfriders, the sandy-haired Woodlock, and the chief.

“You went after a tree-eater?” Woodlock was obviously shaken. “The High Ones themselves must be watching over you, to get away with a scratch like that!”

“A scratch?” Leetah drew herself up sharply, glaring at Maleen. “Those cuts were to the bone, Maleen. A few minutes later and you could have been in serious trouble.”

“Leave her be, lifemate,” Cutter laughed. “A little blood in a hunt is something to celebrate, whether it's your prey, or yourself.”

The youth grinned at Rayek, then, unexpectedly, hugged him tightly enough to cut off his breath.

“You'll be fed for a moon on this,” he crowed. “And you'll howl over the tale forever.”

“We were just too stupid and stubborn to go home empty-handed,” Maleen said, self-deprecatingly.

Rayek smiled, still distracted by their earlier conversation.

It turned out they weren't the only stupid ones. Halek was in triumph over his own kill, a shagback that he had leapt upon while it scratched itself on his rock.

“Jumped down, stuck the spear in, jumped up,” he illustrated with his hand over a bowl of stew. “Almost got thrown.”

“Idiot,” his lovemate, Kiri, said, fondly.

“Idiot who brought home dinner,” Halek corrected him, then sighed, and reached for his own long, black braid. In moments, and with the slice of a dagger, it was off in his hand, and he shook his head with a sigh. “Much better.”

Kiri rolled his eyes again, and Rayek excused himself.

Zhantee was at the edge of the gathering, with Ruffel at his side. She was still dressed in her Wolfrider gifted tunic, and left as he approached, glaring at him.

“Hello, Rayek,” Zhantee murmured, as he sat down beside him. He was staring at his knees in a way that made Rayek distinctly uncomfortable.

Even more discomforting was the awareness that he would not have noticed Zhantee's unhappiness before the quake. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to remember the boy's name.

“Zhantee-” He began, but Zhantee burst in before he could finish.

“I'm sorry, Rayek!” Zhantee looked close to tears. “I should have stayed back, not Halek. I wrecked the hunt!”

“If you'd stayed back,” Rayek snorted. “We'd never have taken a tree-eater. And you're not as fast as Halek, so we probably would have lost one of our best hunters.”

Zhantee stared at him as if he'd grown another head.

Now it was Rayek's turn to stare at his knees.

“I'm sorry, Zhantee. I shouldn't have said it.”

Zhantee stammered a bit, but Rayek spoke over it.

“You're not the best of us, but you will be, one day. You work harder at hunting than any of the rest of us.”

“Ah,” Zhantee blushed, and wrung his hands. “I don't work harder than anyone. Everyone has to work hard, here.”

“Don't underestimate yourself,” Rayek told him. “You're no less important than anyone else. You're a good hunter, and you hunger for knowledge. Wait and see, you'll be among the best of us, soon.”

A soft laugh interrupted them.

Leetah, dressed in the soft tunic that Ahnshen had made for her, and also the leather breeches of a Wolfrider, was standing just outside the light from the fires and lamps.

“I came to see if you had any aches and pains from the hunt, Zhantee,” she said. “But I see Rayek has done my job for me.”

She turned to go back to the fires, and her Wolfrider, winking over her shoulder as she did. “You should listen to him, Zhantee. Sometimes he knows what he's talking about.”

...

As it happened, Naksima and Amrok were headed in the same direction they were, and, some days after the birth, when she was strong, Naksima signaled to Shen Shen that they should travel together.

Shen Shen was, at first, unsure. Naksima was nice, and Amrok was gentle, if shy, but they were still her people's ancient enemies.

A voice that sounded exactly like Osek's echoed in her head.

**They'll never be friends if we don't give them a chance.**

She whirled, to where the elder was loading the zwoot.

He saw her stare, and a look of profound sadness overtook him.

It was magic, she realized, that had put his voice in her head. That had been his thoughts, thrown between them as if it were nothing.

She would ask him how to do it, she decided. And she would take his advice.

“If you come with us, you must ride the zwoot,” she ordered Naksima, firmly, leading her to the animal. “Up, now, up!”

The woman looked petrified, but she gathered her strength, and even helped Osek up. Ahleki stayed in her sling on Shen Shen's chest, walking with the zwoot lead in her hand, to lighten the poor creature's load.

The humans had their own animal, a cock-eared, bright eyed creature, something like the jackals in the desert, but sweeter, both in face and manner.

When Amrok saw the curious look that Shen Shen cast on the animal, he cleared his throat diffidently and, pointing, said, “Dog.”

Shen Shen followed him, and repeated it several times until she was certain she had it. However, once she had it, he pointed at the animal again, and said, “Nali dog.”

This, also, took time, until she understood he meant this as the animal's name.

The Amrok pointed behind them, to the zwoot.

He was a little disappointed when she had to explain that the animal was nameless, but he managed the word well enough. Then he picked up a blade of grass, and began again.

They exchanged little words like that all day long. At the end of the day, while Naksima tolerated Amrok's fussing, Shen Shen went to help Osek with the unpacking.

“That thing you did,” she murmured, as she tied the zwoot's harness to a loop he always shaped in the wall of their night-huts. “Where you put your thoughts in my head.”

“Sending,” he smiled, sardonically. “All elves can send. I never thought it would fall out of use.”

“It's been many eights of eights years since my folk needed such tactics to keep ourselves secret,” Shen Shen pointed out. “I think Savah might have been able to do such things, but I rarely saw it.”

Osek sighed, eyes distant. Shen Shen let him think himself out.

“I'm, going to teach you,” Osek said, finally, firmly. He held up his hands to put off an objection she had no desire to make. “I know these humans are nice, but they might not all be. And there may be trolls, or wolves, or something like that.”

Shen Shen reached out and took his hand. “Thank you.”  
“I'm selfish,” he laughed. “I'm as lonely for my past as you are, Shen Shen.”

She stared at him, realizing that she had never considered it. He was as lost as she, and had lost much more than she had. There wasn't just distance between him and his people, but time. He had been born long before Savah. If there were any of his people left, they might no longer know him.

“Oh, Osek,” she embraced him, nearly in tears.

He hesitated, then wrapped his arms around her.

“There, there, little one.”

She wasn't sure if he was comforting her, or that younger self, who had thought he could retrieve the lost home of those long ago ancestors. Possibly both.

...

“You're sure they aren't spirits?” Amrok watched the two little people nervously. They were seated crosslegged, face to face, and if one got too close, the air around them seemed suffocating.

“I don't mean to say they're human,” Naksima finished changing the baby's mosses for clean, and kissed him. “Or that they don't have powers. But why would a spirit have a missing leg, or fingers?”

“There's the Bitten God, Nosho,” Amrok reminded her. “He has only one leg.”

“He's a _god_ , Amrok,” Naksima laughed. “There was an old woman in my mother's village, you know. By the sea? She used to call whales out of the water when it was fishing time, to herd the fish into nets.”

That had been so, Amrok remembered. He had known an old man who could direct hunters to where a deer would be, and it would be there within minutes of their arrival.

“Well, what do you suppose happened to them?” He asked her, taking the baby so she could brush her hair.

“I don't know,” Naksima looked at their little companions. “Whatever it was, it must have been terrible. The little woman cries at night, when she thinks we're sleeping. And the old man looks as if he was captured by The People Who Fight With Us.”

...

Trollhammer had adopted her with a calmness that surprised Leetah. He still tended to a meloncholic air from time to time, but he seemed to have found peace in the village. Just as his former bond-mate's father seemed to have, especially in the newborn forges that Telah and Nani had decided to make, hoping to recycle old jewelry and broken tools into new.

“We could trade with the trolls for some of their metals,” he was suggesting, now. “Right, you lot don't know trolls.”

He rubbed the fur on his face, thoughtfully.

“They live under the ground.” He illustrated them with his hands. “Arms and legs this big around, skin as green as leaves. They love metal, use it to deck themselves and their maidens.”

“And you trade with them?” Nani shook her head, tossing her hammer in her own thick hand. “What could they possibly need from you?”

“Furs, feathers, berries,” Cutter piped up, from where he was lying with Leetah, between Trollhammer and Nightrunner. “Things that grow on the surface. I'm sure they'd like your fruits, especially the ones that burn like fire.”

Cutter had made acquaintance with the fire-fruits only yesterday, in Toorah's rabbit stew, which he had swallowed gamely, only the sweat on his face, and his near choking on water betraying his agony. Leetah remembered feeling impressed, in spite of herself, by the young Wolfrider's manners.

Now she was only contented. The wolf at her back was warm and soft, just like Cutter's hand on her leg.

Chores were done, little ones were playing. Ahnshen was weaving a cage for the moths he had brought there in small cocoons, Minyah was watching her new friend make trading plans with a pleased smile, and Savah was leading a group of small pupils out of the woods, with Rainsong, Woodlock, and their little ones at her side.

There was a hole in her side, the exact shape and size of Shen Shen, but she was content.

...

Rayek... Liked Maleen.

He hadn't really liked anyone. Not until Leetah was born, a true equal, a magic user, intelligent, beautiful. Even most of his memories of his parents were overshadowed by his contempt for them. A contempt, he had been forced to admit recently, was not as deserved as he had thought.

Yet Maleen was also intelligent, he could see now, behind her giggling, and sensible. So he had begun to like her.

It was as if he had opened a door in liking her. Zhantee, always a shadow, had sprung into life, gentle, but ready and willing to hunt and even try his clumsy hand at the old magics. Ruffel, who could find nests even in the tallest long grasses, and who always had a kind word for her fellows. Even his parents, he had begun to see many good traits in them, their fierce will, their willingness to work, their pride in him, that he had not seen before.

Rayek had friends, to his utter shock. Not just friendly acquaintances, but friends, who came to him for advice, offered their own, who understood him, and who he understood in return. Not just hunters, now, either, but Ahnshen, and Ahdri, even little Shushen.

It was as if he had been welcomed in from the cold to a friendly fire, only the fire had been there all along.

**I don't see why you called me out here if all you plan on doing is staring at the grass.**

Rayek closed his eyes.

Strongbow. Was not a friend. Wasn't truly more than an acquaintance, but his ability to send was the best that Rayek, who hadn't ever sent until he met the other elf, had ever seen.

He had the feeling that Strongbow didn't like the village, or anyone in it. His lifemate, the maker of the leather clothes that the Wolfriders wore, had struck up a kinship with Ahnshen, though, and Ahnshen's little brother Shushen and the boy, Dart, were inseperable. Strongbow and Rayek had happened to be going the same direction, which was why Rayek had asked him out here, both for his marksmanship, and his powers.

**You look at one patch of grass, you've seen all of it,** Strongbow continued, rubbing at his bow discontentedly. **Why did you even ask me out here?**

“I told you,” Rayek said, trying to be patient. Maybe if he pretended he was speaking with Shushen. “I want to test the range of this “Sending”.”

**Could have done that at the Holt. Or your village, Moonshade and Dart have a liking for it. Don't know why.** Strongbow looked suspiciously as if he were pouting. **Wouldn't even be here if they hadn't wanted to visit Cutter and Treestump.**

_Pretend he's a child._

“I want to test how far you can reach with it.”

**Can't do that in one night,** Strongbow snorted.

Rayek felt a bit overwhelmed.

“You can't-In one night?”

**I can send up to a night's ride away from the Holt,** the Wolfrider said, carelessly, drawing his bow, and sending an arrow off into the twilight, nodding when it hit something. His wolf friend ran to collect the kill, coming back with a ravvit that it proceeded to devour in front of them with sickening snaps of bone. **Takes too long to go and come back, though.**

“A night's ride.” Rayek frowned. “Have you never tried to send farther?”

**What for?** Strongbow shrugged. **Everything good is at the Holt.**

“What for?” Talking to Strongbow sometimes felt like talking to a bird, completely alien. “To see if you can!”

Strongbow looked at him as if he were ill.

**Why?** and there was the taste of reluctance in the sending, as if he didn't quite want to know the answer.

Rayek was thrown by it.

“Be-Because,” he stammered, then drew himself up. “To test yourself, to see your limits, to know yourself!”

Strongbow shrugged. **I already know myself. What's sending going to do to change that?**

Rayek had spent his entire life using and perfecting his powers. Once, he had even thought he had reached his limits, before the ground-quake had proven him wrong.

He was his powers, his knowledge, he was a throw back to an elder age, a true child of the High Ones. He had always measured himself against what he could do, not for others, but for himself.

**You act like this is magic,** Strongbow drew his bow again, and fired another arrow. **Anyone can send. I can send a little further. So what? That little one, Ruffel, she can talk a little louder.** A memory of Ruffel, but louder, much louder than she was in life. Ruffel as Strongbow heard her. **That's not magic. You should talk to Redlance, or that rockshaper.**

**Well,** Rayek wasn't used to feeling clumsy, and tried to keep his irritation from colouring his thoughts. **Why do you send? I've never yet heard you speak.**

Strongbow took the rabbit that the wolf brought back this time, shrugging.

**You can't lie in sending,** he explained. **Sendings have only truth. And when you send to someone, you know them better. You're closer to them. It's better than speaking. Elves lie when they speak, hide, make things different. In sending, there's only truth, and no one hides.**

Rayek had never considered this before.

“But haven't you ever wanted to test it?” He felt uncertain, strange.

“Tell you what,” Strongbow actually looked amused. “I'll test it with you, but you have to send the whole time.”

Rayek glared at him, then gathered all his concentration.

**Deal.**

...

“I wish you weren't going.”

It had been the longest time he had ever lived with his parents, since he was a child, but thanks to Korek's builders and Ahdri's rockshaping, he had a hut of his own.

“I feel as if this is the first time we've ever known you,” Jarrah continued, putting some of his clothes in a bag. “And now you're leaving again.”

“Well,” he felt somewhat awkward, and nodded to her swelling belly. “You'll have the new little one to ease that.”

“I know,” she sighed, laying her hand on her stomach. “And I'm grateful, but it isn't the same.”

“You were special.”

His father stood in the doorway, looking a little sorrowful.

“We didn't always understand you, but we understood that.”

“I thought you might be a rockshaper,” Jarrah continued. “So from the first time you kicked, I named you for the stones.”

“But you were so much more,” Ingen hugged him, for first time since he was small. “I'm sorry, we didn't always understand that.”

“We didn't always understand you, my son,” Jarrah added, embracing them both. “But we have always loved you.”

Rayek extracted himself as slowly as he could, and nodded goodbye around a lump in his throat. Then he left his parents' home. Again.

...

They traveled with Amrok and Naksima for two dances of the moons. Shen Shen walking beside Amrok, Naksima up on the zwoot with Osek. At night, they all ate together and rested in the same home, with the babies sleeping in the same bed. Ahleki seemed to like her new companion, who took her babbling and kicking with phlegmatic stoicism.

Amrok had been making something for the past few eights of days. He would tell Shen Shen what the individual parts were, but not what they were altogether. There was a small cup, at the top, a piece of wood, thin as the shaft of a spear, in the middle, and a flat, flexible piece at the end. It was cleverly made, so carefully fitted together it might have been one piece. Shen Shen often admired it, touching the soft wood, and playing with the end.

Her sending lessons with Osek were coming along well, too. She would send to him while they were walking, or when she went hunting with Amrok, and sometimes at night when she wanted company.

“Shen Shen!” Amrok came running to her, excitedly.

“What is it?”

“Here!” He held the strange thing he'd been working out to her. “Shen Shen, foot! Leg!”

“What?” She took it gingerly, and stared. It took a moment for her to understand what it was.

Then she laughed, joyously.

He had added two straps. One to go around her leg, the other to go around her waist. What she thought was a cup had been padded with leather and grass.

Amrok helped her put it on, and she daringly took a few steps, and landed on her face.

She felt everyone stand stock still in shock behind her, and rolled over, giggling.

“I think I'll keep my crutch for now,” She told Amrok, as he helped her up, stuttering his apologies.

And keep it she did. For a moon, while she and Amrok worked together on the new leg. Finally, as the greater moon began to wax again, she stood on her own two feet.

“Need walking stick,” she commented to Amrok, in his own tongue. “Better than crutch, though, yes?”

“Much better!” He looked as proud as if he had made both her legs instead of one. “Wait and see, Shen Shen, we'll perfect this leg.”

The sun had lessened its hold on the world, and the nights were beginning to grow chillier. Ahleki had begun to crawl across the floor of their night-huts, and talk a little. “Shen” was easy for her, “Zek” was next. “Nakama” and “Amok” followed.

“Baby” was Naksima and Amrok's unnamed little boy.

Then one day, the land began to change.

“Ah!” Amrok grinned. “The hills. We'll be in the mountains, soon.”

“Mountains?” Shen Shen tasted the unfamiliar word, warily.

“Big hill, big!” Amrok urged them on, grinning hugely.

This must be their home, Shen Shen realized, wistfully.

Gradually, the hills grew bigger and bigger. The land changed even more. The trees began to turn from green to yellow, to orange, to brown. The nights weren't just chilly now, actual frost, a rare occurrence in the Sun Village, appeared each morning.

Then they turned around a mountain, and came face to face with a cliff.

“This way,” Amrok urged them.

It was hard climbing, directly by the face of the cliff. At first Shen Shen used her crutch, then she began to crawl. Amrok finally picked her up and put her on the zwoot, who, bizarrely, seemed to barely notice the inclines.

“Amrok!”

A young human girl jumped down from the cliff, which had begun to grow smaller.

“Amrok, Naksima!” She ran to them, laughing, her twin braids trailing behind her like wings.

“Amrok and Naksima are home!” A young man appeared out of nowhere, laughing. “Everyone, come!”

In moments, they were surrounded by humans. The laughter was raucous, the joy infectious. Even Ahleki and the baby boy were giggling, in Shen Shen and Naksima's arms.

They spoke too fast for Shen Shen to follow, and a touch to Osek's mind told her the same. She felt shy and small, in this great crowd of five fingers.

Suddenly, Amrok appeared and drew them forward.

“This is Shen Shen, she helped Naksima when the baby was born, and this is Osek, he has great power.” He pointed to Ahleki. “This is little Ahleki.”

The crowd erupted into noise again, this time directed to Osek and Shen Shen, who smiled uncomfortably. Apparently they would simply have to endure.

Suddenly the crowd parted, and a tall human, with a streak of grey in his beard, came forward. He held out his hands and drew Amrok to him.

“My brother.”

It was all he said. Shen Shen suddenly had a flash of long auburn hair, and strong arms drawing her in, a memory like fire, and burst into tears.

...

Naksima sighed, letting the woven mat of grass fall over the door. Shen Shen had claimed embarrassment and exhaustion, which was true. It was also true that she carried a heavy burden on small shoulders.

Osek was amusing the children with small toys that he made for them out of stones. He did this between sips of soup.

He and Shen Shen, and Ahleki, really, were such odd, almost ugly little creatures, with eyes like bugs and ears like bats. Really, they looked almost childlike one moment, then unearthly the next. If not for their kindness and gentle ways, one might have been afraid of them.

“Is the little healer alright, sister?” B'rak asked.

“She is and she isn't,” Naksima sighed. “She almost never weeps before others, but I have often heard her cry at night.”

B'rak looked at Osek, and shook his head.

“I would think, one missing leg, that would be an accident.” His face grew sorrowful and grim. “But all the pieces taken from the elder, that is something else.”

“I don't think they're from the same nation, chief-brother,” Amrok commented. “From their clothes, their skin, they seem very different.”

“Are they wife and husband?” B'rak asked. “He seems so much older than she.”

“They aren't,” Naksima began to nurse the baby. “She treats him like an elderly father, more than anything.”

“Poor things,” was all B'rak's wife, Nilma, had to contribute to the conversation.

...

It was while she was examining Clearbrook for abnormalities. The elder of the Wolfriders mainly complained of boredom and her mate hovered near, like an oversized hummer bird.

Leetah let her mind drift a bit as she examined the developing child. No abnormalities besides a slightly larger brain than usual, and a mild injury to the lungs that she headed off without a twitch.

“Get off, Pike, Pike, get off me!” Rainsong roared, then twisted, throwing her brother into the creek.

“You'll be sorry for that,” Pike warned, following up with a splash of water. Rainsong shrieked, and hid behind her lifemate, who shook his head and leapt for the branch above him.

Newstar, sitting on a Sun Folk woven blanket with her brother, giggled madly.

“Watch this, little one,” Pike had managed to escape the water, and caught up his sister in one arm. “This is how to deal with annoying bugs.”

“Don't you dare!”

Too late, Pike had dropped his sister in the creek with almost no effort.

Leetah went hot, then cold with rage.

It had no rhyme or reason, it was simply there. She thought no one had noticed and excused herself to Clearbrook with an assurance that all was well, and a promise to see her in an eight of days.

She settled in a small thicket with Trollhammer, who laid his head in her lap for a good scratch, and settled in.

“Leetah?”

It was Cutter, crawling in beside her.

“Is everything okay? I felt something.”

She looked away, into Trollhammer's fur. She thought there might be a tick there.

“You don't have to talk about it,” he said, softly. “Do you want me to go away?”

She shook her head, and moved so he could sit next to her.

They were still like that for a long time.

Finally, she sighed, and spoke.

“I was angry with Rainsong and Pike.”

“Eh?” He was confused. “Did they do something to you?”

“No,” she sighed, wondering if he would understand. “I was jealous. Because they're together. And I am not with Shen Shen.”

“Ah,” he sighed, deeply. “I remember after my parents died. I was angry at all the parents in the tribe. I didn't even want to see families.”

“It feels so unfair.” She complained. “And yet, I'm wicked. I should be happy for them.”

He shook his head. “I don't think it's wicked. It's just the way people feel sometimes.”

She turned and buried her head into his fur vest.

“I miss her so much,” she wept. “I cannot live through this! How could anyone live through this?”

He hummed an agreement and held her more tightly.

She wept herself out, and left feeling lighter.

However, not long after, a sense of ennui seemed to take the village. The second harvest had come in already, and a third was planted and waiting. The houses were all made, between Korek and Ahdri. Everyone had new clothes, and a second set besides, that Ahnshen and his weavers had made ready, and they were warm, from spun zwoot hair, so even Wolfriders commented on them.

Those who had worked the hardest, striven the most fiercely, to live and to thrive, suddenly became morose and languid. Some wouldn't leave their huts, some wouldn't leave their beds. Leetah feared it was an illness at first, but her touch told her nothing was wrong.

It was sorrow. Kept at bay until now, when it burst past the barriers in place and silently flooded the village.

Toorah, until then one of the pillars of the village, was among the worst affected. Leetah would leave off her eight days in the Holt, and come in on Trollhammer's back, only to find her mother hadn't left her bed all day.

“Is there nothing you can do?” Ahdri asked, later, in the hut she shared with Savah.

“This is not an illness of the body,” Leetah explained, later, feeling as drained as her patients. “It's a sickness within the soul.”

Almost all those affected were those who, like her mother, had been at the forefront of the re-settlement. As if they were candles that had burned themselves out, they now stared, listlessly, out at their new home.

“It's as if we've become a village of ghosts,” Ahdri mourned, opening the door to stare out into the centre. The well she had recently shaped was only half finished, where she and Korek had left it that afternoon.

...

Shen Shen came out from behind hanging mat, rubbing her eyes sheepishly.

“Sleep well?” Nilma asked, handing her a bowlful of dried fruit and a hot drink.

“Yes, thank you.” Shen Shen sat down, and winced at the spicy taste of the juice. It was sweet, but hot on the tongue. Not bad, though.

“Good,” Nilma stirred a pot and smiled at the scent that rose from it. “Naksima and Amrok's baby will be named today.”

“Oh?” Shen Shen asked. “Why so wait?”

“Oh, they had to come back here,” Nilma laughed. “Of course they couldn't name the baby in the middle of no where. Who knows what might happen?”

Shen Shen had no idea, but she had some understanding that this was a naming ceremony.

Later, she didn't understand much of what was said, but the naming ceremony was much like the Sun Folk held. The baby was adorned with jewelry and paint, passed from woman to woman, save those like Shen Shen, with babies of their own, and cooed and fussed over. Then he was handed to the chief, who held him up in two strong arms.

She didn't understand much of what was said, just “name” and “baby”, but then B'rak proclaimed, “Shenkir” as if it were very special, and everyone looked at her, grinning.

It took a moment to register, then she understood.

“Name me?” She asked Naksima, disbelieving. “Name baby me?”

“Of course, little one,” Naksima hugged her tightly. “Who else would I name him for?”

Shen Shen stared at her. So tall, and with such strange ways, but these five fingered people had welcomed her and Osek and Ahleki.

The legends of the Rootless Ones weren't just of humans killing elves. Elves had killed humans, too.

Yet here she was, and Osek, and Ahleki, celebrating a baby that she had helped birth. A baby named for her.

It was as if the world was being reborn.

...

Strongbow clearly thought Rayek was a bit mad, but indulged him, if only out of boredom. He would obligingly leave Ahnshen's hut as soon as Rayek arrived, nodding over his shoulder at his shy, sweet-featured lifemate. She, on the other hand, was always hip deep in fabric, leather, newly spun threads and silk, and conversation with Ahnshen and his helpers.

They'd drop young Dart off with Shushen's parents, who seemed overjoyed that their little troublemaker of a child hadn't just found a friend, but that that friend was apt to talk sense into Shushen when even they couldn't.

Strongbow, it turned out, wasn't just a hunter, he was an elder among the Wolfriders, a fact that astonished Rayek when he sat down to try to calculate the other's age, coming up, finally, with a number that seemed to barely equal half of Rayek's.

Strongbow, on the other hand, seemed somewhat appalled at what he saw as Rayek's lack of maturity.

“I suppose it makes sense,” Rayek said, after he calculated out Strongbow's years. “After all, your people live hard lives, it stands to reason your lifespans would be shorter.”

**And yours hardly seem to do more than mushrooms in the shade of a tree,** Strongbow retorted, then smiled thinly at Rayek's glare.

That was how Rayek learned that Strongbow gave as good as he got.

He complained about it later to Maleen and Zhantee, who nodded with suspiciously solemn faces until they finally burst into laughter, and he had to leave them, feeling ill used.

**That's it,** Strongbow's voice came softly to him, after a full night of waiting for the archer's voice to fade. His mental words were still clear, though softening, as clear as they'd been at half the night, and as clear as they'd been at his side.

Rayek had spent his night floating above the Shagback Rock he'd left Halek on that afternoon, days ago, when he and Strongbow had made their pact.

**Try sending more strongly,** he sent back, wondering if the archer would hear him.

The absolutely foul language he received in return reassured him.

**Why not try?** Rayek asked, feeling his body begin to sink as he divided his energy.

**What use is there for it?** Strongbow sent part words, part feeling, memory, image. Hunting, eating the heart out of a kill while it steamed, the cold snow against one's cheek, a well-loosed arrow and a painless death, being entwined with Moonshade in the heat of the day, seeing one's child walk for the first time, the scent of home, of tribe.

Rayek took a deep breath, overwhelmed, as always, by Strongbow's contentment with the minutiae of home and family and the every day. Wolfriders, if one followed Strongbow's views, seldom caught themselves up with tomorrow, or maybe, or yesterday, or if. The sense of “Now”, as Strongbow called it, was intoxicating.

The past was a loose pit of sand, where one's feet were caught in if and only. Rayek understood that, but he had always thought of tomorrow as a place to grow towards. Tomorrow, when he could float other things, stun animals for a longer time, do who knew what else. Tomorrow, when Leetah would finally answer yes, when a little one with green, or gold eyes, with long, red hair, or black curls, might finally appear. Tomorrow, the free world of the future, where anything might happen.

Strongbow, he thought, would stay in “Now” all he could. Stay in the “Now” and never grow, never reach. His powers were as much a tool to him as his bow, something he took pride in, but only so far as it would make the tribe happy and safe. “Now” was life, and tomorrow a dim brightness that one could never focus on quite rightly.

It did not occur to Rayek that he had never in his life thought so deeply about another person's view of the world, albeit from a perspective of the superiority of his own.

**Think of it,** he was suddenly inspired. **As a tool. If you can send more than a day's ride away, you can send to others on hunts that take you far from home. If someone travels away, you can send to them, keep an eye on them. Or what if someone were lost? Wouldn't it be a good thing to touch their mind, find them in an instant?**

The answer was a thoughtful though. Not words, for once, consideration, like watching the rain from an overhanging tree as it brought a fish to the surface. A young girl, with that self same fish in hand, grinning widely, followed by a silent assent from Strongbow.

Rayek grinned, unaware that he had begun to float higher again.

...

“Perhaps I should stay,” Leetah fretted, watching her mother. Toorah had decided to retire to bed early, but Leetah could feel her, still waking, staring at nothing.

“It would make your mother happy to know you aren't unhappy,” Sun Toucher said, sighing quietly as he helped her put the dinner things away. Cutter, banished after dropping a bowl, was outside speaking with his uncle about trolls again, making plans.

“I just wish there was something I could do,” Leetah sighed. “It seems for everything given, something is taken from us.”

“Your mother's grief takes her where we cannot follow,” Sun Toucher agreed. “Your new life, with all its joys and challenges, takes you where I cannot follow. That is life. Time is the great road, where we meet and leave one another. For now, we leave one another. I think we will meet again, on time.”

Leetah smiled at the advice, and rolled her eyes at her father's terrible humour.

“I suppose we'll introduce those smiths to old Picknose,” Cutter was laughing, a soft, Wolfrider laugh. “He's going to lose his pick, though.”

Treestump laughed, a rolling belly laugh.

Cutter saw her approach and smiled.

“Picknose guards the Troll Caverns,” he explained. “We've only been deep inside once. Greymung, the Troll King, he had cheated us out of our goods, so I went inside to growl them out of him with Skywise. That's where he got his necklace, the lodestone.”

“His piece of the stars,” Leetah nodded. “I remember.”

It would have been impossible not to. Skywise recounted the story to anyone who would listen, particularly Ruffel and Maleen, who had decreed the young stargazer “charming” and a “delight”.

Treestump seemed to understand what she was saying, and nodded.

“I'll take Nani to see them tomorrow. She says they know how to work gold, silver, that red metal, copper, but they've never worked brightmetal. I'd like to see if they can hammer that out.”

“It'll be exciting, anyhow,” Cutter shrugged. “I don't think we've had a good trade with the trolls for a while. Moonshade says she has some furs lying around that we won't need for the White-Cold, Nightfall has a few tallows, and the red-bits are in season. We'll offer them, and some of the garden fruits.”

The cavalier fashion with which Wolfriders handled other people's possessions was still somewhat discomforting to Leetah, who made a note to make sure she was there to smooth over any misunderstandings. While the other elves could be generous to a fault, the Sun Folk might not appreciate the loss of the food, so close to a time when they had been so hungry.

**Is your mother alright?** Cutter asked, after they had bidden Treestump good bye.

Leetah sighed. **There is a sadness within her. She was shielded, in a way, from the true loss of the old village, and Shen Shen. Now the shield is gone, and the sadness has infected her entire being. So she retreats from it.**

**I wake up thinking that Dewshine is outside,** Cutter admitted. **Even though I know she isn't. I think if it weren't for you and the cub, I'd do the same.**

**Duty is a powerful helper when one has sorrow,** Leetah agreed, removing her dress and beginning to put on her nightgown. She had only one now, a simple tunic cut from an old tent. Soft enough, and warm.

Cutter stopped her as she laced up the front, and growled.

**I hate this,** he told her, loosening the laces. **I miss your skin when we're in your village.**

She sighed, but let him pull off the gown.

**I'll get cold,** she warned him.

He shrugged, and pulled her under the blankets, nuzzling at her shoulder.

**I'll warm you up.**

...

“You and Strongbow?” Maleen squinted at a garishly painted target and threw her dagger at it. The new throwing knives, from a trade with the odd, ugly creatures who lived below the earth, flew swift and true, and Maleen made it look effortless, conscious of Ruffel watching her from behind nearly completed basket. “The one who always looks like he's eaten sour figs around us, and the hunter who didn't know Halek's name until a moon ago. It's a good match.”

“I knew Halek's name!” Rayek protested, looking stung. “I knew every villager's name.”

“Of course,” Maleen agreed, trotting off to collect her dagger. “You just thought everyone named their child “dirt-digger”.”

It had been his preferred epithet, and he knew it, so all he could do was fume silently at her.

When he did that, he looked all of eight and four years old. Maleen, who had been born a full eight times eight times two after him, wondered if that young Rayek looked at all like her friend did now, or if he had been softer, swifter to smile, and perhaps more in joy and less in self satisfaction.

“He's just teaching me Sending,” Rayek explained. “That, and patience.”

“Anyone dealing with him would need patience,” Maleen groaned. “He's so... ugh. He behaves as if the whole village were an inconvenience with him, as if we were all clumsy calves, in his way.”

“Still,” Rayek shrugged. “He's the most powerful sender the Wolfriders have.”

“Hm,” Maleen grunted agreeably, and pulled him down with her beside Ruffel, stealing a handful of dried fruit from her lovemate's bowl. “Have to say, might be handy to learn that.”

“I'll teach you,” Rayek offered, taking some fruits.

Ruffel moved the bowl closer to herself, and offered them a mock glare.

“Get your own fruit,” she snipped, teasingly. “Or hunt yourself another tree-eater, mighty huntress.”

“Ah, you're never letting me live that one down, are you?” Maleen ignored Rayek's eyeroll , and leaned back on her lovemate's pillows. She touched the basket, running an admiring hand over the delicate pattern woven into it. “That's lovely.”

“Rainsong taught it to me,” Ruffel said, nodding across the target range at Rainsong, who smiled and waved back, where she was helping Minyah shuck child's teeth for drying and grinding. “The red is the roots of a tree that grows near here. They strip it small, with knives, and dye it with berries.”

“It's pretty,” Rayek offered, inadequately, but since he wouldn't have even spoken to them a year ago, Maleen accepted it, and Ruffel shot him a bright smile.

“Strongbow teaching you sending,” Maleen commented. “Rainsong and Woodlock are always here, helping garden, or weave. That little stargazer learning from Sun Toucher.”

“And Leetah and Cutter's baby on the way!” Ruffel added, cheerfully not noticing Rayek's wince.

Maleen expected some cutting remark, but Rayek surprised her by growing silent, eyes slightly distant.

“It's like we're weaving ourselves together,” He murmured. “I wonder what will come of this new cloth?”

...

Toorah sighed, sitting at Leetah's side. She seemed barely awake, and her smile was subdued, nearly invisible.

Everyone was there. Even the Wolfriders, politely curious, had come, with Clearbrook seated on three layers of furs and cushions.

“It will be a celebration, like Flood and Flower,” Ahdri had decided. “On the day that well is finished. A celebration of new life, new hope.”

All the lifebearers, including Nooran and Dekirah, who had just Recognized their long time lovemates days apart, were seated on the new dais, built only days ago with help from an amused Redlance. Savah had a new throne, of carved wood, sanded with fine sand from the edge of the lakes.

Ahdri stood by the well, with two other maidens, and three youths. She clapped her hands, and they all turned, pulling on ropes secured to the tiny brick wall around the precious water. As if in ancient rite, the first water was drawn from the small hole, and poured into pitchers.

“Drink, my children,” Savah proclaimed, standing up, and accepting a glass of water. “Drink the fresh water from the springs deep within the earth. Drink in joy, drink in new life. Drink hope, new hope, from our new land.”

The water wasn't as sweet as the spring that ran through the Holt, Leetah thought, as she accepted a cupful from Ahdri, but it was good, cold, clean.

“We once dwelt in the desert, in the place where sorrows ended, or so we thought. We forgot that, in life, if you live, there are always sorrows.”

The Wolfrider Elders, particularly Treestump and Clearbrook, nodded at that, looking thoughtful.

“Yet, even when sorrows come, there is another gift they bring,” Savah held out her hands. The darkness had come in a moment, she was nearly invisible, then, suddenly, the torches and the lanterns sprang into life.

“This is hope. We who were once of Sorrow's End, who found our sorrows did not end, we have found this gift. This is our village, our home, this is New Hope!”

The villagers began to cheer. Even Leetah found herself clapping and shouting, though her mother's weak rejoinder didn't go unnoticed. The Wolfriders howled, and laughed and it made music of their joy. Soon, anyone who could was dancing, or making music, or singing.

Leetah couldn't. Her mother had fallen asleep, and she needed to help her father take her back to their hut.

...

_Five Months After The Groundquake.._

The moons hung heavy and yellow in the sky, waxing. Leetah watched them from a low branch of the Father Tree, as high as she could climb yet, with Trollhammer below, playing with Silvergrace's cubs.

The creek laughed and gurgled below. Leetah thought Shen Shen would have liked this small, hidden home, deep in the Green Growing Place. Leetah was becoming fond of it, fond of the Wolfriders, fond of the wolves. Her hair piece was now left behind in the village, so Cutter would pin her hair back with flowers, and she wore a short leather tunic of Moonshade's making, as well as soft leather shoes. The flowers didn't completely catch her hair, and her curls spilled wildly out around her face.

She wondered if anyone else felt this way, as if the moons had come closer to admire the changing leaves, and the small puffs of mist at one's breath. She leaned back against the tree, and sighed. Toorah had grown worse since the celebration, living as often as not in a world of her own making, misty and distant, even when Leetah and Sun Toucher were there.

“Here!” A basket landed in her lap, and she looked down, seeing Nightfall in the dim, yellow moonlight. The younger maiden gestured for her to come down.

“I'm going to pick spikeberries,” she explained, once Leetah was at the foot of the tree. “It's just Woodshaver and me, so I thought you and Trollhammer might come.”

Which explained why she had been ordered out of the tree, Leetah thought, and cast her friend an arch look. Nightfall giggled.

“Alright, but you've been up there all night, and it's making Rainsong nervous. She's the type to get sick when she has a cub. And if you don't do something, I know Moonshade is looking for someone to help at the tanning pools.”

“Well, in the interests of avoiding that,” Leetah agreed, and they walked through the woods to where Redlance had shaped the spikeberries, close enough easily gather them, far enough that bears and whatever else might like to eat them woudn't be disturbed by elves.

After finding deer in the garden, Minyah had had Ahdri make a high fence around the outside. The Wolriders, particularly Strongbow and Redlance, had found it disturbing. Redlance might shape plants into being, but the Wolfriders didn't then own them, and if a deer, or a bear, or any other animal wanted to eat them, well, as long as no one was hurt, that was alright.

The Sun Folk relied on their harvest to prevent starvation, unlike the meat centred diet of the Wolfriders, and found the idea that they might expect to share the difference between eating and starvation utterly horrifying. It had taken a full morning of arguing before a perplexed Cutter and Treestump had been allowed to take Nani and a zwoot-load of vegetables to the Caverns.

Picknose, gruff, green, and completely alien, had argued briefly at the door, while Leetah had politely tried not to stare. Then he, Nani, and Treestump, had gone inside. Nani had come out with two armloads of metal bars, and a babbling tale of golden stairs, and jewels bigger than one's head, and a forge larger than three elves.

“Here they are! Right on time, the half-full Mother Moon,” Nightfall took held a berry up to Leetah. It was small, and covered with spikes, that stung when she tried to take it.

“Ouch!”

Nightfall blushed. “Sorry, they do that. The shell is hard. We smack them with one of Pike's stone hammers, or slice it with a knife, then the fruit comes out, soft, and we eat it from bowls. Your people will like it, too, and we have enough to share.”

It took some doing, but Leetah learned the art of picking them, from the stem, avoiding the spines. At first she and Nightfall chatted, little things, how was Toorah, no better, was Redlance still well, yes, much so, the moons were lovely, they were like this every Leaf-change, then they fell into a comfortable silence, albeit one that panged Leetah, as she remembered Shen Shen and she doing chores like this.

But the pain fell into a comfortable ache, and soon she was smiling, picturing Shen Shen picking berries, complaining of stings, and asking her to heal them.

Nightfall didn't. She was too hardy, or maybe too used to doing without. Rainsong had walked by Leetah yesterday with Newstar. The little girl had had a scrape from elbow to wrist, and the two had been shocked when Leetah healed it. It hadn't even occurred to them she would care, as it wasn't life threatening, or even very painful. They all thought like that, that Leetah was too busy to be bothered with every little thing, as if her power needed to be hoarded against disaster.

It was interesting. Unlike in New Hope, where she was inundated with requests as soon as she arrived, the Wolfriders let her inspect Clearbrook in peace. Only in the case of broken limbs or smacked heads was she summoned.

Or to pick berries.

“Do you keep them?” she asked Nightfall.

Nightfall shook her head.

“You have to eat them fresh,” she explained. “They don't dry well. My mother used to put them in clay pots and heat the pots in a fire. But I only have one pot left, and I hate the thought of breaking it.”

Leetah, who didn't even have a pot, understood.

“My people might be able to help there,” she offered. “Zhantee and Korek have been making pots for winter storage.

“That would be wonderful,” Nightfall sighed.

Trollhammer chuffed suddenly, and Leetah, beginning to understand the wolf's language, followed his gaze, and saw nothing.

The wind blew through the trees, and they whispered to her, but this language she still didn't speak.

Then the earth began to shake.

“Nightfall!” Leetah threw herself on her friend. “Groundshake!”

She lay on top of her, feeling the earth rumble, and tightening her grip everytime the other maiden tried to move.

Trollhammer nosed them, whining, and Leetah thrust out her leg to shove him down. She realized after a moment that she was screaming, and she tried to-

- _save her necklace. Rayek had given it to her, and she'd been cleaning it when the quake hit. She turned back to pick it up, and the mountain came down._

“Shen Shen!”

She seemed to awaken, as if from a nightmare, to her own voice. Nightfall had pushed her off, and was staring at her, shocked.

“I'm sorry, Nightfall,” she stammered, sheepishly. “I just-”

Nightfall raised her hand, and pointed behind her.

“Curse you, elf, fill that hole faster!”

She turned.

A trollmaiden, exotically lovely, with green skin, lumpy flesh, full lips, and golden, tightly curled hair stood, staring at with as great a shock at Leetah as Leetah was at her. There was a powerfully built, mysterious figure in a cloak, a small, delicate, disjointed creature in a ragged tunic, and-

“Picknose?”

The troll warrior whirled, glaring at her.

“Don't just stand there,” he snarled at them. “Go get that fine chief of yours! There's a war underneath us!”

...

“They'll give the children to the new mothers,” Oddbit sighed, wrapping a lock of golden hair around a meaty finger. “The maidens will go to whatever warrior pleases themselves to have her.”

It was horrific. Had she not spent hours healing Ekuar from the tortures visited on him by Oddbit's former king, Leetah might have felt more pity.

He'd been starving.

He'd been dying.

Cutter's protective instincts had been triggered by first sight of the elderly elf, just as Leetah's healing instincts had, but, like her, he'd been rendered helpless. Picknose swore he'd known nothing of Ekuar, that he'd stumbled across him while rescuing the two she trolls, Maggotty and Oddbit, from the northern troll army. Leetah had done all she could, coaxed back fallen hairs, restored skin to youthful tautness, eased pain in aching bones, but in the end, Ekuar was still less a hand, a finger, and a leg.

Ahdri had ensconced the elder in her hut. Rockshapers, it seemed, had to stick together. Then she'd accompanied Picknose and Cutter to seal off every known exit to the outside world.

She returned with a sad, weary look.

“We sealed off every exit we could find. There's no other escape.”

Oddbit sighed, and returned to looking out the window.

“Stay here in the village, for now,” Savah urged Picknose. “Your expertise would be much appreciated in our forges.”

“Yes, Picknose, Stay!” Nani coaxed him. “We could use an expert at the anvil here. We have too many clumsy apprentices.”

Treestump, one of those clumsy apprentices, first harrumphed, then laughed.

“Hm, much obliged,” Picknose said, gruffly. “Much obliged.”

Ekuar, Leetah assumed, was still silent.

...

So was Toorah, who smiled weakly when her daughter came in.

“I thought you were Shen Shen,” she murmured, sheepishly. “For a moment, I saw your hair.”

Leetah, sensitive after a healing, couldn't bear it, and turned around, mounting Trollhammer.

**I'm going home,** she sent to Cutter.

She wasn't given to self reflection, and so didn't wonder when she had begun to think of the Father Tree as home. She clutched Trollhammer's fur, and felt her body move with his, his powerful legs, his long flanks. She matched herself to the drop of elf blood within him, and they moved as one, although five moons ago she hadn't known there was such a thing as a wolf.

They stopped by the same pond where Leetah had watched the fireflies dance, moons ago. Only one year ago, a blink of an eye to a lifetime like hers, she had been in her hut, with a half finished embroidery destined for a dancing veil, and her little sand cat, with Shen Shen urging her to gather lizard eggs, or try new gowns on, or to eat a little more. Only a year ago.

And now, she was on the back of a wolf, wearing leathers that a moon ago had been on a deer, mated to a mortal elf, lifemated to a mortal elf, bearing a child. Not Rayek's child, someone she hadn't met a year ago. Someone who would be like a breeze in her hair, and yet, was more alive than anyone she had ever met.

She put her hands on her belly. It had begun to swell, the child moved quickly. In almost two years it would be born, and it wouldn't know, unless she told it, that there had been such a thing as Shen Shen in this world.

...

Shen Shen found a new teacher in Nilma, and found herself able to teach in return.

“We put like this,” she moved the half decayed fruit to another clean pot she had placed in the fire, then added some water, and the powdered milk rock to it. “Now seal, and wait eight day. Put on hurt, keep bad blood away.”

Nilma had already taught her her recipe for willow tea, and red-root salve, and smiled at her thankfully.

“I have this, when leg hurt,” Shen Shen laughed. “I not need nice foot from Amrok!”

It was a weak joke, but Nilma understood that kind of necessary humor, and laughed with her.

She and Osek had found an easy home with B'rak's tribe, which she had begun to understand as the Red Mountain People, a large nation, with four settlements, overseen by B'rak himself. Osek helped to build them a home, and soon people were coming from all over for his “building magic”. Nilma had no sooner heard of Shenkir's birth than she had marched over and demanded Shen Shen as an assistant.

Humans were nothing like Shen Shen had imagined, even after moons of travelling with Naksima and Amrok. They could be cruel, but, she privately thought, no more than elves were. Despite whispered child tales of humans eating their own young, anyone caught mistreating a child was instead ostracized, quarantined as if they were ill, under an elder's supervision, and the child taken into Nilma and B'rak's home, or the home of some other high-ranking person, until the parents were able to take them back, if that ever happened. They weren't always kind to one another, but their unkindness wasn't the sum and whole of them, existing in equal part with gentleness, as it often did in elves.

Even their so-called stink was nonsense. They bathed fastidiously, and when Osek brought a clean basin of hot water to the surface, taming a liquid fire beneath it to keep it so, he was showered with gifts from the entire village, save the very old men who insisted it was healthier to bathe everyday in the creeks that melted off the ice on the top of the mountains.

“You know, that ice never fully melts,” Naksima told Shen Shen one day, as they rested in front of Shen Shen's hut, watching Shenkir and Ahleki play their baby games.

“Never?” Shen Shen stared at the mountain, with its white cap.

“Never.” Naksima seemed proud. “They say it used to be much bigger, but it's been smaller in the past, and it's never disappeared.”

Shen Shen thought of it, and talked it over with Osek later.

**A glacier,** the elder sent. **It's from the very cold time in my youth. Back then it would have covered the entire mountain.**

A memory, being cold, hands aching with the recent loss of another finger. All they had to eat then was ice, carved from the glacier, but it was better than nothing, and Mekda was faint.

Shen Shen didn't realize she was crying until Ahleki made a protesting squawk. Osek looked embarrassed.

**My apologies, dear one,** he looked away.

**Never, Osek,** She hugged him tight. **I promise you, we'll only stay for a time.**

**When Ahleki's grown,** he sent, and she nodded.

**When Ahleki's grown, we'll find other elves. Then we'll rescue Mekda and Ekuar. Eyes will see and hands will touch with joy again.**

**Or what's left of them, anyhow,** his mind touched hers with their shared wryness, and she giggled through her tears.

...

Ekuar gradually regained himself, with Ahdri's help. The two rockshapers grew close within a matter of days, Ahdri finding in him the father she had never known, as an orphan, and he seemed to think of her as a daughter.

In a moon's time, the sky was grey more often than not, and what had been an uncomfortable nip in the air had become an easy chill. Zwoot's wool had proven more than useful, forming new tunics and soft breeches that, under leather, made the Sun Folk, unused to cold, warm as if they had been home. Still, Leetah found herself dealing with odd complaints, what the Wolfriders called chillblains in worried tones, colds, and occasionally dehydration, as, without heat spurring them on, the Sun Folk forgot the body's need for thirst.

As for her, she found her time spent more often than not in the Holt. Moonshade had made her new leathers, a fur jacket, and soft, fur lined breeches, delicate boots of cat fur, and promised gloves to cover her hands, and a hood for the jacket.

Cutter spoke to her of snow, and ice. He promised her that even the lake would become as solid as rock, and clear as a summer's day. One Eye was excited, in between smoking fish(and eating it raw, which meant an embarrassing complaint of worms) and wishing for his new cub to be born in the White-Cold that he assured Leetah was fast approaching and not a moment too soon.

“He's like this every turn of the seasons,” Clearbrook told Leetah, smiling bemusedly as her lifemate urged their nearly grown cub out to go catch more fish. “As if he were a cub again.”

Leetah laughed a little at the thought of One Eye as a child. He was so much an elder, wise, but hard and stubborn as stone, that it seemed impossible.

Clearbrook's womb was worn out. There had been more than five pregnancies, Leetah though, privately, but held her tongue. She had learned to let her patients have their little lies, which seemed to comfort them. This pregnancy would be the last, the very last. In the eight of days since she had seen Clearbrook, the womb had faltered in its burden somewhat, and the baby's growth, so fine and good, had slowed.

“How is your mother?”

Leetah stared at Clearbrook. The elder had a wise, gentle smile on her face, and she looked as patient and kind as Toorah had used to look.

“Your friend Rayek said she was ill when he came to fetch Strongbow,” Clearbrook sighed, and laid her hands on her swollen belly. “It's hard, to lose a cub. Is she any better?”

Leetah sighed and shook her head.

“Weary, angry. She'll cry all day, then rage all the next. More often than not she loses herself in memories. I go in and she pretends that she's seeing Shen Shen. Sometimes she won't even get out of bed,” Leetah tried to keep it a calm recitation of memory, but a gradual bitterness crept in. “Father says she is like that whether I am there or not. She seems to see only spirits, all those lost in the past.” Leetah had spent the first three hundred years of her life in the light of her mother's eyes, the only one in that light. She had, grudgingly at first, then joyfully, spent the second half of her time sharing that light with Shen Shen. To be out of it completely was new, and hurtful.

“When I lost my cubs, it was the same,” Clearbrook admitted. “For years. I was angry, at the world, I suppose. I didn't see the point in so many fine, lovely young things being born, only to die.”

“Time will heal it, I suppose,” Leetah muttered, losing all pretense at healing, and curling up beside Clearbrook with her arms wrapped around her knees.

Clearbrook, with the efficient, absentminded affection familiar to all her kind, moved aside a bit, and wrapped an arm around Leetah.

“Time,” she agreed, then smiled slyly. “And a kick in the rump from time to time.”

Leeah laughed, trying to picture herself kicking smooth, dignified Toorah in any part of her anatomy, let alone that portion.

“Look!” Clearbrook pointed through the bare, grey branches of the trees, and the last few brown leaves. “Snow!”

Leetah stared, open-mouthed, at the small, white dots that drifted down, disappearing into the ground.

“First snow!” One Eye put Scouter over his shoulder, much to his son's chagrin, and ran around the Holt, hollering. It was early still, though dim, and other Wolfriders stuck their heads out, first making complaining noises, then falling into a hushed silence.

“It's like magic,” Leetah whispered, touching it, only to have it disappear under her hands.

“The first snow always is,” Cutter yawned. “Wait a few moons, then you'll be sick of it.”

“Yes, but we whine for it in the hot times, so don't complain for now,” One Eye followed his commentary up with a handful of snow, and Cutter leapt down to take his revenge.

Leetah laughed, wondering how the Sun Folk would respond to the white blanket spreading itself over the woods.

...

Maleen woke up shivering, and huddled closer to Ruffel for a moment.

“Did you forget to bank the fire?” Ruffel whined. “It's freezing!”

Maleen poked her head out of the blanket and eyed the stove, then sighed, and went to open the small door, sliding it over to look inside. Little red coals glowed brightly in the ashes, and she built it up before jumping back into bed.

“It's still dark,” Ruffel murmured.

“I'm so cold,” Maleen moaned, and curled up tighter. “Don't let's wake up-”

“Maleen, Ruffel!” A burst of cold air preceded Vurdah's entry into their hut. “Come outside, quickly!”

Maleen sighed, and rolled over. Ruffel laughed, weakly, and began pulling on the many layers of clothing they'd begun to wear in the cold.

“Hurry, hurry!” Vurdah actually held out their coats and helped put them on, as if they were children.

“What is so exc-Oh.” Ruffel's laughter fell away in a hush of awe.

The outside was lightly coated in what almost looked like clouds, come down to rest on the walls and roofs. The stubbled remains of the gardens poked through the stuff, and it fell, in a soft, dancing way to a silence that was somehow more muffling than anything Maleen had ever heard.

“What is it?”

Maleen stooped and picked a handful up, only to have it melt in her fingers.

“It's water!” She exclaimed. “Frozen water.”

They knocked on doors, and shouted into windows. Picknose and Maggotty told them off, but Oddbit, fetching in a fox fur dress and bearskin boots, came out to flirt and play. Ahnshen passed out hand coverings that he and Moonshade had apparently been working on, “gloves” and “mittens”. Minyah and Darah put their heads together and made a hot breakfast of cured meats and bread and porridge. Even Savah, swathed in furs, with only her head free, came out.

Treestump, Rainsong, and Woodlock laughed at their wonderment.

“It's just snow,” Rainsong told them, wrapping a fur blanket more tightly around Wing. “And enjoy it now, you'll be sick of it before long.”

Hot drinks were passed among them, and Treestump led the children in a complicated game that involved shaping the snow into balls and throwing them at each other. Before long, the grown ups had started playing as well, and it devolved into a free for all.

“Still wish you'd stayed asleep?” Vurdah teased them, as she rubbed snow into Ruffel's hair.

“No,” Maleen said, signaling for Rayek to dump his floating load of snow, so she could rescue her lovemate.

...

Shen Shen's leg ached in the cold, along with Osek's, well, everything, but Nilma's willowbark tea had proved a miracle, if a slightly bitter one that no amount of honey could disguise. At this point, they didn't even bother, just reached for it at the first sign of weather, and drank it as quickly as possible.

“Snow!” Amrok came running first thing in the morning, carrying a leather strap with small copper spikes on it. “Shen Shen, don't go out yet.”

“I no go out until snow go away,” she told him, glaring at the carefully covered windows, and huddling closer to the fire.

“It's not so bad,” Amrok laughed. “I brought this, to make it easier.”

“This” turned out to be an attachment for her false leg, strapped on the bottom to catch on the ice and snow.

“Oh, so many thanks, Amrok,” She sighed. “Have to go to Nilma, now. No more excuse.”

Despite her grumbling, she smiled at him. Truly, it had begun to wear on her, the thick, falling snow, and the hot, closed atmosphere of the hut. Nilma and she went from home to home, checking on patients, making sure there weren't any new ones. Grandmothers and grandfathers smiled at them, and accepted willow powder and dried berries for their homes, filled with generations of children. Mothers with coughing children accepted breathe well, and took the berries to bribe stubborn children. The young women who tended the Mother's Fire, a hearth at the centre of the village that was never permitted to die, thanked them for breathe well by giving them copper pots they had made themselves. One of their number was coughing too much to tend the hearth, and Nilma told Shen Shen that arrangements had been made for her to become one of the attendants of Osek's new bath. Shen Shen wondered if the girl would like it, with her thin chest, and small size.

“She was born two moon-dances early,” Nilma explained. “The lungs didn't get a chance to fill correctly. I doubt she'll see twenty-five summers, but she's stubborn, that Lekshmi.”

Shen Shen had had mothers nearly drop their babies that early. All it took was a touch from Leetah, and all was well, but the mothers waited with bated breath after that, some refusing to leave their huts, some remaining in their beds.

Lekshmi's mother hadn't had that choice, Shen Shen realized. She must have been just as frightened as any elfin mother, but she'd done what she needed to do, and now her daughter was a priestess of her people.

Shen Shen wondered what, exactly, a priestess did.

...

Moonshade didn't usually touch Strongbow's arrows, but the thick cord that Ahnshen had given her, in thanks for her furs, along with some thick fabrics, and thin silk thread, was soft and the same colour as a Leaf-Fall moon. She'd watched the Sun Villager weave, but the slow, steady work had been of no interest to her.

“I don't know if it will be of use to you,” Ahnshen commented, putting it on top of the pile of things he was sending back to the Holt with her, while Dart hugged Shushen, and Strongbow glowered silently with Rayek. “One of my apprentices spun it. It's nice, but no use for weaving, or sewing.”

It wasn't, but it felt soft as mouse fur, and she wanted to touch it. She couldn't remember how the loom worked, and didn't have the room for it, anyways, but she wanted to use the thread.

The arrows would form the frame, she decided.

That was the original plan, but, having wrapped the thread around one arrow, the kind they used against rabbits, with a wooden point, she realized she had no idea how to continue.

She would use the other arrow, she decided, and pull more loops through the first. That would work well.

Day later, she put down her work, and smiled.

There were places where the weave was slightly loose, but it looked intentional, and all her pulling couldn't take it apart. She'd even figured out a way to weave the end together, so it came off the arrow in one piece.

You couldn't cut it, or sew it, she thought, but it was pretty enough. Though what use it would be, she didn't know.

Ahnshen did, when she showed it to him.

“Wrap it around the body,” he demonstrated on her. “Not your colour, of course, but still a pretty thing.”

She blushed wildly. “Really?”

“Of course,” he said, easily. “Like you, Moonshade. It looks delicate, but it's strong and warm.”

**I like that Ahnshen,** Strongbow told her later, looking at the thing. **He's smart.”

“Coming from you that's high praise,” she teased him, looking at the lacy, golden thing. “I'm going to give it to Nightfall.”

**It'll match her eyes,** Strongbow agreed, looking as proud as if he had made it himself.

Nightfall adored it, and went to show it off to Leetah, who was in the village. The next day, Sun Villagers sent word that they would love to learn the new technique.

“You don't have to come,” she said, irritably, as Strongbow bundled Dart up in winter clothes and popped him on Briersting's back, grumbling the whole time. “I can go by myself.”

**And leave you alone with those ravvits?** Strongbow asked. **They'll kidnap you, and we'll have to tan our own leathers.**

“Maybe you should tan your own leathers,” Moonshade murmured. “It's not as easy as you all seem to think.”

**I know it's not easy,** Strongbow stood up, and looked at her, with the piercing gaze that had once cut through to her deepest self, in a moment of Leaf-Fall brightness. **Is that why you like going there so much? Do they appreciate you more?**

Moonshade felt ashamed, then angry at both herself and Strongbow for making her feel that way, but his next words disarmed her.

**I think it's good you have Ahnshen,** Strongbow looked at Dart, mouth easing. **Ahnshen knows what it's like to make things for many people.**

Strongbow, who usually couldn't see anything outside of his target, still had the power to astound her.

...

_Fourteen months after the Quake_

It was months too early, and they had come for her as quickly as they could, but the return trip was just a bit too long.

Clearbrook lay in her lifemate's arms, already nearly as pale as death. Leetah ignored everything else and nearly threw herself against them, already feeling her power blaze within her.

The body, the womb, yes, she had been correct and so had Clearbrook. The only way to stop the bleeding was to still the womb, fully. There might be grand-children, great grand-children, but this would truly be the last child.

As she awakened from her trance, she realized someone was missing.

“The baby?” She asked One Eye, fearfully.

“Scouter has her,” he said, softly, running a hand over Clearbrook's cheek. “She's so tiny, we lay her with Silvergrace's new cubs, to get their milk in her.”

“I must see her,” Leetah stood, and went to Silvergrace's little den. “Scouter?”

“Sh,” the little elf-lad came out, arms wrapped tightly around a bundle of fur. “She's sleeping.”

Leetah smiled, but held out her hands for the baby.

At four moons too early for the air, the little cub's lungs were small, and uncertain. She was tiny, too, and Leetah found herself doubtful that the child would reach her mother in sturdiness or height.

The lungs were simple, though they might still cause troubles later in life. For now, she simply imbued the organs with the strength to do their duty. The height less so, but it wasn't life threatening at all.

There was something else. The brain, Leetah realized. It had been forced to defend itself from attacks by its own mother during formation. This was a taut little organ, but odd. As if it were mirrored within itself.

But she could not alter it, not at all. This was simply its own form,there was nothing to compare it to.

“She needs her mother's milk,” Leetah returned the baby to Scouter. “Take her to your parents.”

“Yes, healer,” Scouter hurried away, cooing under his breath to the infant.

It took a few tries before the baby latched on. Clearbrook was still weak, and looked at the child as if it were some foreign thing, not hers at all. One Eye was focused on helping Clearbrook to sit up, take some broth.

Only Scouter displayed the pure, unbridled joy typical to elfin births.

“She took milk from Silvergrace right away. I'm going to tell her all about it when she's old enough. Doesn't she have the sweetest little fingers? Her hair is darker than Father's, but not so red as mine. Her eyes are grey like yours, Mother.”

Clearbrook blinked down at the baby, who glared back at her, indignant over this sudden entry into a loud, scary world.

“Her eyes are like fog,” Clearbrook murmured.

“Let's name her Fog, then,” Scouter said. “There's fog all over tonight, even in her eyes. She's a cub for rainy nights. I'm going to show her how to jump in puddles, and make mud balls.”

He lay down beside his parents, and played with the baby's hands. Clearbrook smiled at him, then seemed to see the baby for the first time.

“Hello, little Fog,” she cooed. “Look, One Eye, she likes the name.”

“Good thing,” he said, agreeably. “She'll be keeping it for a while.”

Leetah sighed, contented in relief, and laid her hands on her belly, over the little secret she had recently become aware of.

“We're going to have a whole crop of cubs,” she sighed, happily. “Here and in the village, too.”

The Wolfriders, gathered shyly outside the den, took a collective sigh of relief when they finally got a chance to view the little family again, but then they left them alone. All except for one.

Leetah saw Skywise, sitting outside the little home, watching Clearbrook sleep. He stayed there until the moons were half-high, then clambered up into the treetops.

“His mother,” Cutter shrugged. “It was before I was born. Humans killed his father, captured his mother, and took his mother. My father told me they found Skywise in the river. They think his mother- The birth went wrong.”

Leetah thought of it later, long after Cutter had gone into the trees, to join Skywise.

**I hope you know what kind of a world you are coming into, my children,** she sent. **We have such a wonderful family waiting for you.**

...

_Two Years After The Quake_

Rayek woke easily, a product of years spent in the hills alone, when he was the only hunter. It was therefore not surprising, not to him, at least, that he was at the door before his parents even knocked.

“Shade and sweet water to you,” Jarrah began.

“-Our son,” Ingen finished.

Rayek rubbed his eyes, and glared at them and at the dark night.

“It's not morning,” he complained.

“Oh, no,” Jarrah agreed, pushing past him with an armload of blankets. “You're very right there.”

“As you are in all things,” Ingen carried a cloak, which he wrapped solicitously around Jarrah. “We just thought you might like to meet her.”

“Who?” Rayek squinted into the darkness. There was no one else, just an empty village square.

“Here,” Jarrah pulled aside a corner of the cloak, and unwrapped her bundle.

Rayek approached, and looked down.

She was still asleep, a handful of blanket clutched in her fist. Her mouth was pursed agreeably, and curved at the corners, and thick, black lashes rested like feathers on her cheeks. A small shock of black hair poked out of the bundle of blankets. She was small, and altogether lovely.

“H-how?” Rayek asked, feeling as if he'd been sun-shocked. His parents laughed.

“I presume you understand the mechanics,” his father teased him, gently.

“She came earlier tonight,” His mother yawned. “When the moons shone through my window.”

“We're going to call her Rayah,” Ingen said, happily. “And sleep all day, or at least as soon as the bed is made again. Children come messily into the world.”

With that, he slipped outside again, presumably to make the aforementioned bed. Rayek stayed by his mother, staring down at Rayah, feeling as if he could never get enough of her.

“You could hold her, if you like,” his mother offered.

“Really?”

Jarrah nodded, and held the baby out to him.

“Support her head,” she murmured, and he put his hand awkwardly behind her little skull, until his mother was satisfied.

Then the baby opened her eyes.

She had golden eyes, just like his. Yellow and liquid as a snake, or a cat. She stared up at him, then, as if recognizing his likeness, she gurgled something contented, and fell instantly back to sleep.

“She looks just like you,” Jarrah sighed, and leaned back into the chair. “Typical. I do all the work, and your father gets all the credit.”

She didn't wait for him to answer, but fell asleep. Rayek stayed where he was until his father returned, watching Rayah sleep.

...

Rainsong was busy, Toorah was still sick, and Moonshade turned slightly green when asked, so Leetah told Cutter to wait and catch what dropped, and used her powers to ease the way.

“In a way, it's better like this,” She told him. “Just the two of us.”

“Four of us, soon,” he said, cheerfully.

In her younger days, Leetah would have been aghast at the idea of giving birth on the ground, on a clean deerhide, with her lifemate at her side. Now it was part and partial of her life, as much as gathering, or cleaning hides, or smoking meat.

She felt the twins inside her, both reluctant to leave and eager to make their mark in this strange new world.

**Come, my dear children,** she sent. **Come into the bright world.**

**I'm waiting for you,** Cutter added his voice to hers. **I can't wait to see you.**

Ember came first, and Cutter named her for the shock of red hair. Suntop followed, but Leetah chose his name, had had it chosen long since, and then Moonshade returned with Rainsong, just a few moments too late.

“T-two?” Skywise stammered, his usual quick with having deserted him.

“Uh huh,” Cutter smirked, for once having the upper hand.

Leetah let Rainsong help her to the creek, to wash away the sweat and blood, then up into the tree, to wait for Cutter to finish introducing the cubs to the tribe. A chief's cub wasn't like other cubs, she knew. But she did ask Rainsong one thing.

“My mother?”

Rainsong shook her head.

“I don't know what's wrong,” she sighed. “It was like she didn't understand what was happening.”

Leetah swallowed her disappointment, and nodded.

“We'll take the twins to see her later,” she said, as if it were inconsequential to her. “Rainsong, I don't meant to be rude, but I'd like to rest.”

Rainsong, being a mother, understood.

...

_Seven Years After The Quake_

“Shenkir! Ahleki!”

If she had once longed for babies to birth, Shen Shen thought, then she had had more than her share, and more than that, besides.

Between her and Nilma, there were almost no illnesses or injuries they couldn't cure. Things that had been legend once, especially after Leetah's birth, including distillations of molds, mother-weed, and things like that, had proven useful among her adopted nation, and Nilma had introduced her to things that only humans had, including willow powder, baby-not(Shen Shen knew she would never need that, but she thought humans, with their many births, needed a chance to breathe). Akrom made hands, as well as feet, for her and Osek, and for others, humans that, hearing of his skill, came looking for help. Osek had built more houses that their human people would need, she thought, sometimes simply because he wanted to try new things.

They had brought prestige to their adopted people. If only they could bring Ahleki and Shenkir to do their chores.

“Sh!” Naksima held a finger to her lips, giggling softly, and pointed up.

There was a rustling and a giggling above them. Shen Shen sighed.

“I wonder where Shenkir and Ahleki could be,” she said, leaning back on her wooden leg. “I sure hope they aren't behind me-Got you!”

“Aw, Auntie Shen Shen,” Shenkir complained, not as swift as his friend in escaping.

“Don't “aw” me,” she snapped. “Ahleki, come down from there.”

Ahleki floated down, already pouting, mouth opened to complain.

“Not now, Ahleki,” Shen Shen said. “Seven is old enough to gather berries for dinner. I see empty baskets, and full bushes. You'll both pick double the berries, now, children.”

Naksima nodded in agreement, and the two sat down on the ridge with a sigh, watching the pouting children fill their baskets.

Ahleki's floating was the only surprise. She shaped rocks from an early age, watching “Papa Osek”, and sent because her family did. If not for a disastrous fall at an early age, Shen Shen supposed her floating would never have awakened. But fall she had, climbing out of her cradle-swing, only to start screaming while suspended halfway off the floor.

Having watched her sister and Rayek struggle in their lives, in all things not magic, Shen Shen had decided to treat Ahleki as if the magic were secondary. It helped that, rather than being worshipful, the human village simply wanted to know what use the floating was, and otherwise pretended it didn't exist.

“Oh, would you look at that?” Naksima shaded her eyes to the afternoon sun.

“What is it?” Shen Shen followed her eyes. “Oh, visitors! Probably for Nilma's healing.”

“I'd say traders,” Naksima said. “I can see heavy packs and a loaded animal.”

“Traders would be nice,” Shen Shen sighed. “We have more copper than we need right now, and not enough flint.”

“Maybe they'll have pearls,” Naksima suggested, wistfully, fingering her necklace. “I'd like some matching earrings.”

“Or amber,” Shen Shen loved the yellow stones, so seldom found around the Sun Village, and had managed to trade for a small bracelet two turns ago.

A pouting Ahleki slammed two baskets down beside her. Minutes later, a repentant Shenkir had done the same.

“See how easy that was?” Shen Shen asked. “You could have been done this morning, and played without guilt this whole time.”

“Yes, Mama Shen Shen,” was the mutual chorus in return.

Naksima helped Shen Shen up, and handed her Ahleki's baskets.

“Now, look out for bears, you two,” the human woman advised. “Dinner will be when the sun is lower than the eagle's nest. Look out for eagles, Ahleki, don't go above the trees.”

“We will,” then the two were back in the trees, playing childish games that Shen Shen recalled from her own long ago infancy.

She and Naksima laughed together, then began the short trek home.

...

“Concentrate, Rayah.”

The small elf-girl stared at the fire. It had eaten of grass, lumps of buffalo dung, and charcoal, and was bright and fierce. As she stared, it began to shrink, fade, then it sprang back to life, as she yawned and rubbed sleepy yellow eyes.

“Oh,” she sighed, and slumped, putting her head on his knees. “I'm so tired, Rayek.”

His first instinct was to tell her not to complain, and to try again. Fortunately, in the past few years, he had learned some patience.

“We'll put the fire out with water,” he agreed. “This time.”

Having doused and buried the flames, he picked her up to begin the short walk home. They passed Ahdri and Ekuar, shaping a new storehouse together, the young rockshaper and her mentor sharing giggling stories. Picknose and old Treestump, each with a load of ingots, nodded cheerfully at them as they went into the forges. Minyah, waiting outsider her home with her and Treestump's tiny daughter, greeted them cheerfully, and pushed a basket of morning fruit to them with her foot.

“I told your mother the first ones were Rayah's, of course,” she refused to take any back. “Since she loves them so much and helps me with my harvests so nicely.”

“Rather go hunting with you,” Rayah admitted, once they'd passed her. “But if mother asks you, you know.”

He didn't, but he nodded as if he did. He wasn't sure where Rayah's easygoing nature had come from. Perhaps a forgotten grandparent. She was as calm and smiling as Rainsong, as ready to play as to learn, and her magic was neither an embarrassment, nor a pride. She took it in the same course she took the rain, and snow, and sun.

“Oh, Ember's here!”

“Ayooah! Rayah!” the little redhaired girl ran up to them, trailed by her parents. “We're going to stay for an eight of days! Suntop is here to have lessons from Savah and Rayek.”

Leetah, in a short green skirt with a fringe of darker green, and a bodice of the same shade as the fringe, and the ever present Trollhammer, looked more like a Wolfrider than Rainsong and Woodlock, who had abandoned the forest nearly completely, along with their two, soon to be three, children, and now gardened and wove and dared the sun with the best of them. She looked solemn, but smiled gently at him. Cutter was wearing a jacket and the same old breeches, and abandoned him and Leetah for the cubs almost instantly.

“Hello, old friend.”

“Leetah,” he put Rayah down. “Did Strongbow come with you?”

He and Strongbow were, finally, friends, especially as the archer actually came more often to New Hope than Leetah did, purportedly because his lifemate and son dragged him there, not because he actually wanted to come.

“He and Moonshade are in Ahnshen's hut. Shushen and Dart are at the Holt,” she winked at him. “Taking care of the treeden.”

“Ah,” he sighed. “Come Rayah, Mother will be wondering where you are.”

Rayah sighed, but nodded. “Goodbye, Ember.”

“See you tomorrow,” the little Wolfrider said, cheerfully.

Rayah stayed awake long enough to eat a soup of beans, then fell asleep with a smear on her face. Rayek fled and met the archer in the doorway to Ahnshen's hut.

“Long night?” Rayek asked.

**Never let me be alone in a room with those two,** Strongbow said, grimly. **If you're not careful, they start draping things on you.**

Rayek, having recently been fitted for a new robe, sympathized, especially as Strongbow's memories of mothcloth(itchy, and too little pressure to be comfortable) flitted at the edge of his sending.

The plains were, especially on the shagback rock, bright and open and full of stars.

And stargazers. The wolfrider Skywise was down in the grass with Ruffel and Maleen.

**Maybe they'll leave?** He suggested to Strongbow, uncertainly. The archer snorted.

**Doubtful.**

They found an outcrop of rock, next to the lake. The waters were so still it looked as if there were four moons, two in the sky, and two in the water.

The first time they had done this, Savah had scolded them and Strongbow had sworn it would never happen again, that it went against the Way and he didn't know how he had allowed Rayek to persuade him.

Dart had apparently persuaded him to return. Probably used his big brown eyes, Rayek didn't care.

They stepped out of their bodies carelessly. Rayek shielded his spirit-eyes out of habit, as Strongbow shone with a brightness that rivaled the moons, always accompanied by a strange follower in the form of a wolf, until the Wolfrider dulled his blaze.

Rayek led the way, as was his habit. Strongbow followed indulgently, as was his.

They were across the plains in a thought, in a new, swamplike woodland. They left this and hovered over a lake so vast one couldn't see the other side. They left that, and, Strongbow muttering imprecations on his line for doing this, entered a void, a place without time, or light, or, really, anything. Occasionally Savah and little Suntop joined them, but Rayek more often preferred to go as a warrior into the darkness, with another warrior at his side.

They never found anything, though. No matter how long they stayed, there was only the darkness.

**Ugh,** Strongbow drew closer to him.

**What is it?** Rayek asked, idly.

**Something touched me.**

**Your body?**

**No,** Strongbow made a face. **Something here.**

**Really?** Rayek almost laughed. **What was it?**

**It felt like a snake,** Strongbow snapped. **Let's leave.**

**No, let's see what it was.**

**It wasn't good, Rayek.**

Rayek scoffed at Strongbow.

**Don't be a coward,** he taunted. **We've barely begun.**

Strongbow called him all sorts of names that he wouldn't be able to repeat in front of Rayah, but went with him as he shot off into the void.

There was a voice. Soft, gentle, calling him on. It was sweet.

Strongbow tried to turn him back.

**It's not real,** he insisted. **I know what it sounds like, but I know what I felt. It was evil.**

Rayek ignored him after a while, driven on by curiousity. The void began to glow, a pearly shimmer of light.

**Ah, welcome!**

A maiden's voice. She stood in a field of wildflowers, with large, hazel eyes raised to them. She held out her white hands, and smiled gently.

**Welcome, my brothers,** she looked over joyed, as if she had been waiting a lifetime for them. **I have been so lonely here.**

**Rayek, no!**

**Why so afraid?** her eyes grew wider. **After all, in sending there is only truth. You are welcome here, dear new friends.**

Rayek reached out to take her hand, curious and delighted all at the same time. He touched the tips of her white fingers.

**Away!** Strongbow threw him backwards, and the hand became a snake with huge fangs, that struck the archer's spirit form. **Get away from him!**

Rayek was thrown back into his body so hard he fell onto his back, the sight of Strongbow, with the snake pumping poison into his shoulder, still vivid in his eyes.

He leapt up. Strongbow lay collapsed to one side, face slack. Rayek touched him, confirmed his breath, then sent, as deep and as far as he could.

Nothing.

...

They were traders, and they had pearls, amber, and a supply of flint, although they didn't carry it themselves. They told B'rak that they came from the land of Olbar The Mountain Tall, and the people of the Waterfall.

They also stared at Osek, Shen Shen, and Ahleki a great deal, even more than most new people did.

Gardek, the unofficial leader of the traders, blushed brightly when Naksima confronted him.

“We don't mean to be rude,” he explained. “It's just, some years back, my brother brought his wife to our village. But our chief rejected them, and exiled them, because the wife worshipped spirits from the Blue Mountain.”

“I don't see what that has to do with our little people,” Naksima objected. “They aren't spirits, they're just people.”

“I know!” He held up his hands, defensively. “But Nonna, the wife, the spirits she described were like these ones. Winglike ears, four-fingered hands. They have the ability to change stone, and to float, too.”

It did sound suspiciously similar, and she spoke of it later to Shen Shen.

The little woman looked down at Ahleki, asleep in a pile of furs, and reached out to brush the hair out of the little one's face.

“People like us,” she sighed. “I always thought we could look again, after Ahleki was grown.”

Naksima shrugged.

“I don't know, Shen Shen. You said that your people lived in a-an oh-way-siss, far from everyone, in the middle of the desert. Osek told us his people lived in the long ago days, far from here.”

“Oh, yes,” Shen Shen nodded. “Sorrow's End.”

Naksima smiled and ignored the foreign words.

“But if these people are making the people of the Blue Mountain worship them, then they aren't hiding, or just living there. They're tricking those people, lying to them.” She shook her head. “That's wrong, Shen Shen.”

Shen Shen drew another fur over Ahleki. The mountain air was always cold at night, even in the hot summer.

“My people, and humans,” she sighed. “We've always fought each other. Humans attacked us from the first time we landed on this world. Then we elves never seemed to be able to stop it, or we made it worse, like the battle my people's mothers fought when we left the woods.”

“That doesn't make lying alright,” Naksima tried to keep her voice gentle, but Shen Shen cut through it.

“It makes it wrong,” she raised her head, and looked Naksima squarely in the eye with her two huge, inhuman eyes. “If these past few years have taught me anything, it's that humans and elves can live in peace. That we can be brothers and sisters.”

“It is wrong to lie. It is wrong to say you are one thing, when you are not.”

Shen Shen's eyes softened somewhat. “It was because they were afraid. You have no idea how afraid. But it was still wrong.”

Naksima felt an inevitability roll over them.

“You're leaving,” she realized.

Shen Shen looked away, as if she were ashamed.

“It's been eight years,” she murmured. “Since I last saw elves. Even if they're different from us, from me, I have to see them. I have to know. For Ahleki's sake, for Osek's, and my own.”

“Gardek says they ride birds as large as whales,” Naksima told her. “And they have metal spears, but the metal is so hard that even a rock cannot break it.”

“You think they mean to hurt me, Naksima?” Shen Shen shook her head. “Elves don't hurt elves.”

Shen Shen's naivete could be infuriating.

“They're not going to be like you, Shen Shen, or Osek,” Naksima wanted to shake her. “If they're making people worship them as gods. Even if they let you come in, what's to stop them from taking you prisoner, or worse?”

“Elves aren't like that,” Shen Shen insisted. There was a look in her eyes that Naksima had seen before, when Ahleki had first floated, when they had first arrived, when Naksima had entered a tent, Shenkir almost in the world, and Shen Shen had welcomed her in.

“At least leave Ahleki here,” Naksima pleaded. “She's a sister to Shenkir. She might not be safe on a long journey.”

“What?” Shen Shen stared at her, shocked, and laughed. “Of course I won't take Ahleki. Or Osek. They're not strong enough to take such a journey.”

“I won't be gone too long,” she told Naksima as they packed a bag for her. “Gardek says it takes a quarter of a moon's dance to reach the Waterfall people, then another day's travel to reach the Blue Mountain.”

Naksima sighed. “I have this feeling, once you go, we won't see you again.”

“So pessimistic!” Shen Shen laughed. “I could never be so cruel to leave you alone with Ahleki.”

At first Ahleki was sulky and sullen over the trip, hiding on top of houses, and in trees with Shenkir, who was only too willing to follow his age mate into risky refuges from adults. Then the morning Shen Shen was going to leave, the little girl burst into tears, and refused to let her go.

“I'll do all my chores! I'll do everything, I'll clean, I'll go hunting! I promise. Just don't leave me, Mama Shen Shen, don't leave me!”

“Oh, kitling,” Shen Shen gathered the tiny girl into her arms. “I would never leave you for long. I'll only go to meet with these elves. In two moon dances, I'll be back.”

“Don't go, Mama!” Ahleki just clung tighter. **Don't leave me!**

**Ahleki,** Shen Shen extricated herself from the little girl, putting her on the ground, and took off her golden headband. **Do you know what this is?**

Ahleki nodded.

“Your sister gave it to you, in the old village.”

“Yes.” Shen Shen got down onto her knees in front of Ahleki and held it out. “How often do I take this off?”

Ahleki took it, staring at her.

“Never.” She whispered, clearly awed.

“But it might get lost, or broken, on this journey,” Shen Shen said, sadly. “So, you need to keep it safe for me, just until I return, alright?”

“Alright,” Ahleki nodded, looking very solemn. “Don't worry, Mama Shen Shen, I'll take good care of it.”

“Good,” Shen Shen bent it a little more, and put it on Ahleki's head, to hold back her long black locks. “I know I can depend on you, little one.”

Osek blinked back his tears as he hugged her.

**Tell the new elves, tell them-**

**I will,** she assured him. **Mekda and Ekuar will be safe in your arms before the year is out.**

Naksima and Nilma had a belt pouch full of herbs, and a few precious beads of copper.

“Be safe, my little friend,” Nilma said, blinking back tears. “Watch out for poison ivy, you know it itches you terribly.”

“Praise the sun you'll soon have a baby to fuss over, instead of me,” Shen Shen teased her, then embraced them both. “May the High Ones keep you both.”

Naksima recognized the blessing, and sighed.

“I hope you find them keeping you on your journey, dearest.”

“Don't be afraid,” Shen Shen touched her friend's face. Odd that legend had called humans ugly. Naksima and her kin were beautiful, like a sunset, or a waterfall. “I'll return before you can blink.”

Then she gathered her few things, and her walking stick, and left.

...

“We were in the spirit world,” Rayek told Savah, while Moonshade begged her lifemate to awaken, sometimes gently, sometimes by shaking him. “Someone-Someone struck his spirit.”

“You!” Moonshade whirled, snarling at him like her she-wolf. “You did this to him!”

Rayek wanted to cry out his denials, to save pride, but all he could do in the face of her grief was stay silent.

“Mother,” Dart had tears running down his face, and shook his head. “Mother, you know father never does things he doesn't want to do.”

Moonshade burst into tears again, and sent, down, down, into Strongbow's shell.

“It _was_ my fault,” Rayek said, finally. “Strongbow wanted to go back, but I saw-felt-heard something.”

“Like the fluttering of a moth's wing,” Savah entered the room, looking sorrowfully thoughtful. “Then a whisper drawing you on.”

“I thought I had imagined it,” she continued, staring mournfully at Strongbow. “But this is all too real.”

Leetah ran her hands over Strongbow's face.

“I can slow his body, to keep strength and life in it for a time,” she said, softly. “More than that...”

She trailed off, shaking her head.

“Do not blame Rayek,” Savah told Moonshade, and the other Wolfriders who had gathered in Rayek's austere home. “He was deceived by one well practiced in seduction.”

“Broths,” Sun Toucher came by, tapping carefully around with his staff. “And water. It will keep the strength in his body until he is well enough to return to it.”

“And if he doesn't,” Moonshade's hand drifted to her knife.

“No, Mother,” Dart touched shoulder. “Don't even think of it.”

“There's hope yet,” Rayek sat beside Strongbow. “I won't leave him. I'll go after him, Moonshade.”

“How?” Moonshade asked. “Strongbow sent of that place. A black emptiness. The one who took him could be anywhere.”

“I'll find him,” Rayek insisted. “I'll grow stronger, and go after him.”

“I wish I could believe you,” Moonshade sighed. “But I reach and reach for him, and I find nothing. Only one thing can silence a sending.”

...

To be sure, the archer, animal-blooded cur that he was, was not the greatest prize. There had been the soft-hearted elder, the proud mystic, even the child. Any one of them would have been better.

Still, he was an amusing enough distraction, one that might take time to unlock, especially that odd, bright shield. His mental powers would have been nearly the equivalent to hers, were they not governed by that odd, animalistic side of his.

She had to reserve part of her mind to work on him, but if she seemed distracted, what matter?

It would only serve the Gliders to think of more ways to gain her attention. All the better.

...

Shen Shen found she liked travelling, now that she knew there was a place to go back to.

Gardek was kind, even fatherly, and his fellow traders, a woman named Dimit, a man, Mak-isees, and another man, Talbo, were cheerful, more often than not, and willing to answer questions about Olbar, his people, and what little they knew about the Blue Mountain people.

Olbar had lost his daughter to tiny, winged spirits that lived in a place called “Forbidden Grove”(Shen Shen thought it sounded more like he didn't like his daughter's choice of lovemate), and was easily influenced by his tribe's shaman, a bone reader by the name of Ulma. His people had dwelt by the waterfall, the Deathwater, since before anyone could remember. He was superstitious, and fearful of the people of the Blue Mountain, who named themselves the Hoan G'tay Sho, and had come from far away, many generations ago. At one point they had ruled over a vast empire, and demanded tribute be given in the form of humans, which they sacrificed to the Bird Spirits of the mountain, until the many nations of the area had banded together, and overthrown them. Then they had turned on themselves, sacrificing their own.

“You see, when one of their elders nears the end of their life, instead of honouring them in the proper way,” Talbo said, solemnly. “They make them sacrifice themselves to the Bird Spirits of the Mountain.”

“More than that,” Dimit added. “They sacrifice children, too. I have seen it.”

“You have?” Shen Shen asked, skeptically.

“They dress the children up in their finest clothes,” Dimit said. “Regalia for a chief's child. Then they send them to a cave at the base of the Blue Mountain. The sacrifices are forced to walk inside, and they are never seen again.”

Shen Shen sighed. “These are nothing like my people. Or Osek's.”

“I think you will not find your task an easy one, little sister,” Gardek said, later that night. “I find that once a person tastes power, they do not readily give it up.”

“I know it won't be easy,” Shen Shen sighed. “And these elves aren't like any I've ever heard of. But I still have to try. What else can I do?”

“It's not just for me,” she explained. “But Osek is searching for any trace of his people. And Ahleki should know her own kind, as well.”

“Ah,” Gardek sighed. “But it's easier to say than to do.”

“Like all things,” Shen Shen agreed.

...

The moons were full and heavy when Cutter's people arrived. They and their wolves milled around the village nervously, whispering among themselves.

Rayek had very seldom had to explain himself. He found himself the centre of attention as the whispers died and the Wolfriders turned their eyes toward him, some sorrowful, some sympathetic, some accusing.

“What happened?” It was Cutter, eyes fierce and brow furrowed. “Was it a-a bad magic pool?”

“We've seen those before,” Clearbrook added, hands on her tiny, even for a Wolfrider child, daughter, who was intent on pulling her own breeches apart into tiny shreds. “They've even sent.”

“It was,” Rayek swallowed, then raised his head. “She was an elf.”

He described it, how she had started out, then how she had changed when Strongbow had stepped between them.

“You just left him there?” Cutter exclaimed, clearly outraged. Rayek felt himself bristle, but Skywise stepped between them.

“What was he supposed to do?” Skywise said, smiling wryly. “You heard him, Cutter, Strongbow threw him back here, like the stubborn old son of a she-wolf he is.”

“It would have been dangerous to go back, beloved,” Leetah touched Cutter so easily that Rayek had to turn his eyes away, even after seven years. “Rayek did right by bringing Strongbow's body back here, where we could help, and gather together to find a way to return his spirit to his body.”

Cutter turned away, clearly still enraged, but lost some of his fearsome bulk.

“Can that elf-thing come here?” Skywise asked, clearly as much to distract as to gather information, but Rayek took the bait gladly.

“I don't think so,” he thought about the way she had shimmered and wavered in the spirit light. “I had the feeling she was at the furthest edge of her range, just as we were.”

“Do you think she could watch us?”

That was the treeshaper, Redlance. He held his toddler in his arms carefully, as if afraid she would be snatched away.

“If she did, and there were others where she is, they might try to come here and attack us,” Clearbrook suggested, in the exact same tone as one suggesting that that autumn's rain might be a tad cold and it might be best to bundle up against the weather. “Should we have weapons ready?”

“Maybe Scouter should be eyes high,” Rainsong said, hands on her heavy belly. “Just in case.”

“I'm going to be eyes high, too!” His sister insisted.

“Fog, you cry when I take you up on the second branches of the Father Tree,” her brother retorted.

Fog, aptly named for her grey eyes, which ought to have been as clear and fine as her mother's, but which were instead dull and distant, frowned a bit more deeply than she usually did, and returned to destroying her clothing.

“I don't know if she was alone, or not,” Rayek told Skywise. “I don't know if it matters.”

“Might matter, might not,” Skywise shrugged. “We can't do anything about it.”

He nodded at Cutter, standing stock-still, hands in fists, and sighed.

“Suntop's got that gift, to leave his body,” Skywise explained. “That's why Cutter's being such a bear about this.”

Maleen had gathered the hunters while the Wolfriders crowded the village, and they stood, swords and spears ready. Zhantee was urging villagers to stay inside and be calm, not easy in the face of hunters and Wolfriders.

“The first thing we need to do is stay calm,” that, unexpectedly, was Cutter. He waited until everyone had turned to him, then continued. “Rayek and Savah are going to work on returning Strongbow to his body, and learn more about whatever it was that took him. The best thing for the rest of us to do is to make that as easy for them as we can. We'll help with all Rayek's duties in the village,” he smiled at Maleen. “You just have to show us how.”

“Rayek is the finest magic user I have ever known,” Leetah added. “Between him and Savah, Strongbow will be back before we even miss him.”

The Wolfriders, cheered already, went to join forces with Maleen and Zhantee, who looked mildly overwhelmed. Even Dart was smiling and offering his services.

Rayek looked back into his hut. Barely lit by the glow of the lamp, Moonshade was still lying on Strongbow's chest, eyes distant. When she saw him looking, she turned away.

...

“But Nonna, I keep telling you, I am not a spirit!” Shen Shen felt as if she were speaking to Ahleki on a particularly stubborn day. “I'm a woman, just like you, an elf woman.”

“You are but testing my faith,” Nonna said, smiling calmly. “I am not afraid. I believe.”

Shen Shen wondered if something were wrong with the woman, and that was why Olbar had exiled her and her man, rather than her beliefs. She clung steadfastly to the belief that the elves in the mountain were spirits, and that Shen Shen was as well. Shen Shen wondered how that faith held up in the light of her obvious mortality, her wooden leg, and her scars, but it did.

Adar, fortunately, had more sense, and felt that Nonna's beliefs were immaterial, as long as Shen Shen could convince his chief to let him and Nonna stay in the village.

“But why have you not simply joined Nonna's people, if you think she's lonely?” Shen Shen asked him one day.

“Nonna's people don't allow outsiders to live with them,” Adar explained, sounding a bit bitter. “They had a man for Nonna before I arrived. If she returns, she'll have to marry him, and leave me.”

For a moment Shen Shen was horrified, then she recalled Recognition, which was somewhat like that, and wondered what Adar might think of that.

“So, we have stayed here.”

Shen Shen privately still thought that Adar was more lonely than Nonna, but kept that to herself and to Gardek.

“Probably,” the older man admitted, over a bowl of spiced rabbit. “He's always been the stubborn sort, never would admit when he was lonely, or sad. He told Olbar off right before he left. Probably hurts his pride to have to come back, so he makes it about Nonna.”

“Poor Adar.” Shen Shen sighed, then looked to the west. In one more day, they would be in the village of Olbar the Mountain Tall. Then, she would continue alone to Blue Mountain. What then?

High Ones, she thought. Let the elves there be only afraid. Let them see reason. Let them be what I hope they are.

...

Ulma was a bone-reader, like her mother before her, and her daughter's daughter would be after her. Said apprentice was fast asleep, curled on her side like a squirrel, with a satisfied smile. Ulma looked at her with a tenderness that would have seemed strange to anyone outside her tribe.

The bones read strangely tonight. The pelvis of a weasel, a young woman, pointed eastward, a young woman coming from the east. The tooth of an elk, pointing north, news that seemed bad, but would be good. The jaw of a wolf, pointing south, a family reuniting.

And outside the circle of the bones, the skull of a squirrel, pointing west. Bad news from the west.

From Blue Mountain.

...

Strongbow knew pain. He'd been clawed by bears, broken countless bones, had a brush with nettles more than once, been bitten by Briersting's cub teeth..

This wasn't precisely pain.

It was close to Madcoil's vicious sendings, but without a body, there was no way to manage it. His head didn't hurt, it was open before him, brains spilling out. He was numb, as purposeful, cold tendrils of thought slipped into him, winding around his spirit-form.

He deliberately pushed his thoughts away from home, family, lest the snake taste them, and want more.

**Such a primitive way of thinking, little wolf.**

He snarled at her, and she laughed.

He thought he was somewhere. Not in the void, but somewhere. Sometimes, when she was distracted, he could catch glimpses out of her eyes. Caves, intricately carved, and elves, all pale, all with sad, distracted expressions.

He ran as a wolf, in the void, leg caught in a trap. He slipped into Now. Now, he was in her claws, Now, he was running in the darkness, Now, he was biting her, lashing out the only way that he could.

Now, she broke his soul's name in two, and stepped over the pieces, into him.

He screamed, into the void.

...

“There!” Mother finished tying Suntop's jacket closed. “You look so handsome, my little one.”

“Thank you,” Suntop fingered the sun shaped patch that Moonshade had so recently presented him with, beaming with pride as she told him he had made her think of it, and that she was making him a new jacket. Moonshade's leathers were almost never told of in advance. Instead you found them hidden in your den, or she scolded you and made you put them on while she fitted them.

“Mother?” He waited until she finished helping Ember tie her shirt.

“Why is Strongbow sleeping?”

Father was nearby, and he and mother exchanged those long, grown up looks that made Fog scream in irritation. Suntop wasn't like Fog, so he waited.

“Who told you Strongbow was sleeping?” Father asked.

Ember answered, while she tussled with Trollhammer and Nightrunner.

“Dart said his father was sleeping,” she rolled over, as Nightrunner was pulling her shirt.”He said he can't wake up, and that's why we have to stay here, and he's staying with Shushen. I saw Dart and Shushen last night. They were wrestling in the water.”

Father hid a smile, and Mother turned to Suntop.

“We went to see Savah to teach you how to “go out” safely, right?” She asked, and waited for him to nod before continuing. “Rayek and Strongbow “went out” together, but something happened. Strongbow's spirit is stuck, and Rayek and Savah must work together to bring it back.”

“So we're going to stay in New Hope until they finish,” Father said. “Because wolves don't abandon their pack.”

“It's nothing to worry about,” Mother finished, and hugged him tight. “We'll be home again before you know it.”

Suntop waited outside Mother's hut until he saw Rayah leave her hut, with an armful of plates and bowls, and a jug.

“Want some help?” He offered, jogging up beside her. She smiled gratefully, and handed him the jug.

“Thanks.”

They walked in a companionable silence for a ways. Suntop could do that with Rayah. They were the only two cubs in the entire two tribes that both had magic. Savah had told him that was very special. Rayah's magic, fire starting, was even more special, and last Festival of New Green, she had been permitted to light the bonfire. Sometimes Suntop was jealous of her, but not today. Today his magic was important. It was the magic that would bring Strongbow back.

“Here, Rayek!” They sang in chorus, as Rayah's brother opened the door. He looked very tired, with shadows under his eyes, and faint lines between them.

“Hello,” he looked at the food as if he didn't know what it was, and Rayah t'sked and pushed their way in.

It was dark inside, and cool. There was a single lamp, beside the bed, where Strongbow lay, looking not as if he were asleep, but as if he were an empty waterskin. Suntop shivered.

“Look what I can do!” Rayah announced, and took one of the lamps on Rayek's table. When they were older, Suntop would ask her if she had known what he was planning to do, but she would only blush and tell him she just thought it was dark and wanted to show off.

Strongbow was slack, and still. Suntop knew Ahnshen had come and taken Moonshade to go bathe, and to put on a thick, mothcloth night-dress. Dart was somewhere with Shushen, doing older cub things. He was alone, for a precious few moments.

It was all he needed. He took a deep breath, laid his head next to Strongbow's, and followed the faint thread of the spirit trail into the darkness.

...

Shen Shen had a headache, which was what she would later blame her next action on, but there was little time, and the crowd was beginning to look frightened. And frightened humans, like frightened elves, were dangerous.

“Stop this!” She had to shout to be heard over the Bone Woman. “Do I _look_ like a spirit?”

Everyone was shocked into silence, and they stared at her. She could feel them, cataloguing every inch of her, every scar, the nick out of her left ear, the lines on one cheek, the other scars on her arm, her missing leg.

“I am a woman,” she continued, tartly. “An elf-woman. We're beings of flesh and bone, just like you. We bleed, birth, and die, like you.”

“Lies!” Ulma shook her bone rattle. “Lies, we know what the spirits of the Blue Mountain do! What they demand of their followers! I remember the raids! I saw my sister, and so many others, carried off to become the food of the bird spirits!

“No!” Nonna shouted, but Shen Shen interrupted her.

“Well, they aren't spirits, either.” She crossed her arms, and glared at Ulma, one of the few humans she didn't have to raise her head to look in the eye. “And I'm going to Blue Mountain to tell them that. But I won't do it, if you don't let Adar and Nonna stay.”

There was a soft rumbling. Apparently these raids were recent enough to live in the memories of elders. Nonna was weeping, and Adar was glaring at the people, who glared back.

But Olbar the Mountain Tall had a curious, unafraid look on his face, and he came to stand in front of Shen Shen, arms crossed, and stared at her.

Shen Shen looked back, and tried not to show that she was afraid.

Suddenly, as swift as an elf, he reached out and picked her up, tossing her in the air, and catching her as if she were a child.

“What did you do-”

He was laughing.

“Well,” Olbar put her up on one shoulder, holding her there by one hand. “Am I struck by lightning, Ulma?”

“Oh, great chief,” Nonna babbled. “You must not treat the honoured one so.”

The Bone Woman glared at them suspiciously, then tossed some bones in the air. One landed in front of them, the pelvic bone of a small animal, and the claw of a bear. Ulma's eyes widened, and she stared at Shen Shen.

“You!” She pointed. “You are the young woman from the east!”

Shen Shen sighed. “That's what I've been trying to tell you, now-”

“Olbar the Mountain Tall!” Ulma pointed to the chief. “This young woman must be given food, water, and you must take her yourself down the Deathwater cliffs, through the Forbidden Grove, to the land of the Hoan G'Tay Sho. There, she will end the reign of the Blue Mountain Bird Spirits!”

Olbar paled, a shocking sight in such a bear of a man.

“The Forbidden Grove?”

“Mother Life and Father Death have spoken through the bones,” Ulma said, holding up a hand to forestall any objection. “Your nephew, Gardek, will be chief in your absence.”

Shen Shen clutched Olbar's hair, and leaned down to whisper into his ear.

“Didn't go the way you planned, did it?”

...

Starjumper chuffed happily, and took the leg of a deer, turning back to the village. Briersting watched him with a strange kind of indulgent fondness.

“It's for Nightrunner,” Skywise explained to the curious Zhantee. “He can't lead the hunt anymore, so the pack brings food to him.”

“I never thought an animal could be so caring,” Maleen said, watching Starjumper's silver tail through the grass.

Skywise grinned at her.

“I can be kind, too,” he offered.

Maleen laughed.

In truth, the Sun Folk hunters didn't need the Wolfriders with them, Skywise thought. They agreed out of kindness, knowing that the Wolfriders wouldn't be leaving until Strongbow was back.

If he ever was.

Skywise banished the thought. A world without Strongbow, glowering, complaining, and growling, was an impossibility. The archer was annoying, rude, and stiff as rawhide, but he was there, like the stars, and the Father Tree. Nothing could destroy him.

Skywise ignored the flickering light in Rayek's hut.

...

“Savah! Savah!”

Savah ran from her hut, weary from meditating over ways to help Strongbow. She had tried to follow his spirit, to retrace the path that he and Rayek had traveled, to no avail. Perhaps now it was too late, and he had flown for good.

“Savah!” Rayah was standing in the doorway, weeping. “Savah, it's Suntop.”

“I'm coming, little one,” She paused to pick Rayah up and carry her, knowing her long legs would take one step to the little girl's ten. “What has happened?”

“Suntop went after Strongbow,” Rayah wept. “He won't wake up.”

Rayek's hut was full. Leetah, Anatim, Cutter, little Ember. Moonshade, Dart, and Rayek were near the door, watching with a horrified sympathy.

“Wake up, Suntop,” Ember pleaded.

None of them dared touch him, she saw, and setting Rayah down, she went to examine him.

“It's my fault,” Rayah sobbed. “I was showing Rayek that I could light the lamp, and he just, he just climbed up.”

“It isn't your fault, Rayah,” Moonshade said. “Suntop did it himself.”

Savah ignored him, and entered a deep trance.

The spirit-thread binding Strongbow to his body was alight with Suntop's trail. What had been a faint path, ending in nothingness, was now a windstream that she could fly down, into the black spirit void.

In the end, she did not even need to call to him.

He was on one side of a great cage, with spiked bars, and Strongbow was on the other.

“You have to go!” Strongbow's spirit whisper was a hiss of breath. “You have to go, now! Before _she_ hears you, before she comes!”

“Who?” Savah picked up Suntop, who fought desperately to return to the archer. “Who is she, Strongbow?”

Savah had not known spirits could suffer wounds. Strongbow's was covered with cuts, bruises, punctures. He shook desperately.

Then he sent.

An elf, a woman, a cruel, cruel woman. Other elves, flimsy as leaves, or as birch bark, that she twisted and played with. A mountain. Humans, bowing down, as if in worship. Birds, and a-a child.

“A child?” That was Rayek, joining them with a flourish.

“Show off,” Strongbow rested his head against the bars of the cage, and sent again, just to Rayek, who began to look ill.

“I've told you all, now go!”

“Not without you,” Rayek objected, but Strongbow shook his head.

“Savah and Suntop,” he pleaded. “Rayek, take them back.”

That was all it took, and Rayek pushed both her and Suntop back.

“Suntop!” The boy's parents were on him,and Savah stood aside, gracefully.

Rayek was already headed for the door. Savah ran to catch up with him.

“Dear one, what was it that Strongbow told you?”

“She doesn't know that he's beginning to know her, just as she is him,” Rayek murmured. “I must go speak with Old Maggotty.”

...

“A half troll, half elf?” Maggotty swirled the dreamberry juice around her mouth as she thought. “Old Two Edge, more than likely.”

“Two Edge?” Rayek stared at her, as if in shock. “Who is that?”

“A master smith,” Picknose sighed. “The maker of brightmetal, inventor of a thousand techniques. A mining genius, he was the one who thought of taking birds down to check for poison air.”

“Completely mad,” Old Maggotty added. “Out of his head.”

“He would be,” Rayek agreed, staring into his own juice. “High Ones help us.”

He stood up, and left it at the table.

“Many thanks, Maggotty.”

She drank his juice, along with her own.

“Anytime, elf.”

...

The waterfall was the biggest that Shen Shen had ever seen. It spilled from a great lake, and became a river, flowing through a huge, forested valley.

“There is Blue Mountain.” Olbar pointed. “Home of the Bird Spirits.”

Shen Shen had to agree the mountain was blue. It was the biggest around, and bare from about halfway up, grey-blue stone rising into the clouds. Huge caves on the southern face made it look a bit ominous, and she could see birds, big enough that she could make them out from here, flying around the peak.

“High Ones,” she breathed.

“Do you truly think you can bring an end to the Bird Spirits just by talking, little bird-bones?” Olbar sounded skeptical as he spoke, tying a harness about his waist and hers.

“If I can't, then I may have to come back this way, and I've had enough of talking to you, old bear,” she replied, tartly. She was lying, of course. Olbar was, for all his bluster, remarkably decent and kind. He'd even opened his home to her over night.

He laughed now, then grew solemn as they began the climb. Well, he was the one climbing, really. She was clinging to him and trying not to look down.

“The raids ended when I was very young,” He told her. “When all the nations drew together it was under my mother's spears, and they made the Hoan G'tay Sho swear to never make war upon any of us, or we would destroy them.”

“Hm.” Shen Shen remembered what Nonna had told her. “Nonna said it was an honour to be sent to live with the Bird Spirits.”

“That kind of honour you prefer to give your enemies, rather than your friends,” Olbar said, wryly. “They stopped sacrificing us, and turned on themselves. Gardek says there are fewer every year. They used to be the biggest nation around. Now they're the smallest, and smaller every year.”

He took off the harness, and stared into the woods, looking less like a proud ruler of the Deathwater, and more like a frightened old man.

“That is the Forbidden Grove,” he said. “My men and I were chased from there by winged spirits, like angry butterflies. That is where I last saw my daughter.”

Shen Shen thought it looked like a forest. A quiet one, but still just a bunch of trees, and moss, and spiderwebs.

Lots of spiderwebs, she realized, but then, she had never been afraid of spiders, so she squared her shoulders and started marching in.

“If a one-legged elf can go in, I'm sure the powerful Olbar the Mountain Tall can, too,” she taunted him, over her shoulder. “Unless you'd rather be a coward forever, and never know what happened to your daughter.”

“One day you're going to say the wrong thing, bird-bones,” he threatened her, but followed.

It was deathly quiet inside. No birds, no bugs. Nothing making noise. Just stillness, green, and plenty of cocoons.

“They're all different sizes,” Shen Shen realized, after they had walked half the day.

“So?” Olbar asked, clutching his spear.

“So, they probably aren't eggs,” Shen Shen drew her dagger. “I'm going to open one.”

“Don't do that!”

Olbar tried to reach for her, but even with one leg, she was swifter, and she cut through the threads effortlessly. They had no sooner sprung open, than a bird came fluttering out, and sang scoldingly to them, as if they were not the ones who had rescued it.

“Well,” Shen Shen stared at all the cocoons around them. “At least now we know why they call it the Valley of Endless Sleep.”

...

Petalwing stared at the little high-thing. It had come with a big-big-thing, and started cutting open the cocoons. The cocoons were not for big-things, or for strange high-things! The long-dark-hair high-thing had told Petalwing and all the others to go and prepare food, and this they had done, and now the one-leg high-thing was ruining it.

Much vexed! Petawing would fix them!

...

“Ah, well,” Shen Shen yawned, and sighed. “We'll be in the land of the Hoan G'Tay Sho tomorrow, just as well as today. Might even get a better welcome if we get there in the morning.”

“We might as well be in the land of the Hoan G'Tay show now,” Olbar commented. “They were a great nation, once. They took tribute before they made raids. Always for their Bird Spirits.”

Shen Shen looked miserable, for a moment.

“I'm sorry,” she said, then sighed. “It's nothing to do with me, I suppose, but I'm sorry.”

Olbar sighed.

“It wasn't your fault the Bird Spirits are what they are,” he said. “Anymore than it's our fault the Hoan G'Tay Sho are what they are. It is what it is.”

Shen Shen nodded.

“There's a pool over there,” she pointed. “I'm going to go bathe.”

Olbar nodded. “I'm going to build a fire.”

“Good luck finding dry wood,” Shen Shen looked around. “This place is muggier than a hot spring.”

“Go have your bath,” Olbar said.

As he worked, Olbar dreamed that his daughter and her lover were just beyond the trees. They built a little hut for themselves, safe from the different nations, safe from him.

If he and Shen Shen just went around another twist in the path, Selah would be there, with a grandson, and the young man, and he would tell them to come home. He was sorry, but all would be well, now.

Shen Shen screamed.

...

“Get off me!” Shen Shen batted away the butterfly-creature, which screamed, and twisted back around. She ducked under the water when it spat, which left the mass floating at the top.

“Bad high-thing!” It screeched when she came up for air. “Bad!”

There were dozens of them, with delicate, brightly coloured wings that nearly glowed in the darkness. They swarmed like bees, and she fought the terror that rose as she left the water, and her clothes, naked as her birthing-day.

Olbar came, roaring, and the creatures changed their attacks. But the one she had batted was a bit slow, dizzy, perhaps, and she was able to grab it.

“Leave him alone!” she yelled. “Leave him, or I'll cut this ones wings off.”

She was ready to do it, for all that they spoke like elves. She would have, had the tiny creature, screeching its distress, not called off the rest.

“What are you?” Shen Shen asked, and got a faceful of webs for her trouble. She tightened her grip on the creature and it squeaked.

“Don't hurt Petalwing! Don't hurt Petalwing! Poor Petalwing!”

“Stop spitting webs at me, then.” Shen Shen reasoned with the creature.

“No more webs,” it tried to smiled at her winningly. “Petalwing promise.”

“You speak this thing's words?” Olbar asked.

“It speaks my people's tongue,” she told him. “But strangely.”

“Let Petalwing go,” Petalwing pleaded with her. “Petalwing be so happy, let Petalwing go!”

Sympathy nearly loosened her grip, but she forced herself to hold on tightly.

“Three years ago, two humans came to this place,” she said, as patiently as she could. “A she-human and a he-human. He” she pointed at Olbar. “Chased them. Where did they go?”

“Go?” Petalwing laughed trillingly. “Big things no go. We make safe, in wrapstuff.”

“Wrapstuff?” Shen Shen looked around. “All these webs, that stuff?”

She began to feel a bit sick.

“Where did you put them?”

Her grip on the creature had loosened, just enough, and it slipped free, with that same trilling laugh.

“Never tell!”

She used several words that she had learned from Rayek, and turned to Olbar.

“She's here.”

“What?” He stared at her.

“Selah's here!” She looked around, and began to put her clothes back on. “Olbar, which way were you chasing her?”

“Uh,” he looked around. “That way?”

“Are you sure?” Shen Shen looked hard at him. “Are you sure?”

“I recall that tree,” he seemed more confident. “And those bushes. Yes.”

They ran along a long overgrown path.

“There!” Shen Shen pointed. “Olbar, that cocoon!”

It was huge, and looking at it, she began to see the shape of a woman in it, entwined with a man.

“High Ones,” she whispered. It was huge.

“Selah!” Olbar leapt on it, using his huge, obsidian blade to cut the webbing.

The butterfly-creatures tried to seal up the holes, but Shen Shen fanned them away with a branch, and gradually, the form of a lovely young woman and an equally well-formed young man became apparent.

At first, they stayed sleeping. Then they moved, stretched, and changed. The girl sat up, yawning.

“M-Malek?” She looked to her lover, and her face was unspeakably tender. “We have slept but little, I-”

 

She saw her father, and leapt to her feet, holding up a dagger of quartz. The kind one might give to an exceptionally skilled warrior-child. Then Olbar spoke.

“Selah.”

There was a weight of sorrow, remorse, and joy in his words. He wiped his eyes, and held out his arms.

“Oh, Father!”

Selah was a young woman, and she ran to him. He embraced her, then held out his other arm to the boy.

“Malak, come to me!”

The boy was still for a moment, then he went.

Shen Shen couldn't watch, and turned away, overwhelmed.

Petalwing was perched on a small branch, watching her with large, thoughtful eyes. Shen Shen sighed, and held out her hands, beckoning. The little creature hesitated, then flew to her, joyfully.

“Petalwing miss high things,” it sighed.

“Oh, alright,” Shen Shen tucked it into her jacket. “But no more webs on big things, alright. Or high things, for that matter.”

“Petalwing promise.”

It looked so happy that she almost wished she had done this sooner.

“We have no more trials of adulthood,” Olbar was saying, calmly. “There will be no more. And Shen Shen will stop all sacrifices. We will have no more raids, ever.”

“Shen Shen?” Selah looked over her shoulder. “But she's so small.”

“And she has one leg,” Olbar agreed.

“And I'm going to stop all the madness,” Shen Shen told Selah.

There was an opening in the trees. They were at the western foot of the mountain. On the other side, the Hoan G'Tay Sho were waiting.

....

Petalwing remembered belonging time. When preservers and high-things worked together.

Petalwing remembered.

...

 

 


	2. By The Still Waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shen Shen finds more than she bargained for in Blue Mountain, and Rayek brings a new player into the game.

Of course, they attacked her.

Even without her leg, Shen Shen was swifter than any human. Unfortunately, without her leg, she also couldn't climb unaided, and she had made Olbar and the children return to Deathwater Falls.

“High thing go wrapstuff?” Petalwing suggested.

“Softly, little one.”

They had hidden in a cave, halfway between the cavern where the giant birds perched, and the village. The humans marched back and forth outside, searching, but they hadn't found the little bolt-hole thus far, and Shen Shen was going to make it stay that way.

**Cub, go home.**

The sending came out of no where. She couldn't even have sworn it was from the mountain, which had been silent up until now.

**Who's there?** She sent back.

**Go, now!**

She had to stifle a cry as anger, fear, hatred, flooded her mind. She had an image, a wolf, no an elf, both? He was tall, and glowing brightly, as he warned her back.

**She'll find you,** a snake, with huge fangs. **She'll hurt you.**

Shen Shen gritted her teeth.

**I am going on!** She sent back. **I'm not leaving until I meet these elves!**

Osek, Mekda and Ekuar were depending on her. Ahleki was going to have other elves around her. And so help her, she was going to go into that mountain, and she wasn't going to let some wolf-elf stop her.

**I'm going into that mountain, and there's nothing you can do about it.**

He blinked, shook, shimmered, and began to disappear.

**Look out for the Black Snake!**

He was gone.

They hid until nightfall, and snuck out under the cover of darkness. Shen Shen looked at the mountain. No humans to carry her here. Just a one legged elf, and a spitting butterfly thing.

Butterfly thing.

“Petalwing!” The bug flew up, eager to contribute.

“Can you put wrapstuff on my leg? Not that one, the wooden one. Make it sticky, so it clings to things.”

In moments, the leg was covered in webs. She glared at the mountain.

“We just need to make it to those caves,” She told Petalwing. “We'll sneak in from there.”

...

“You've had a visitor, my little wolf.”

Strongbow was finding it hard to ignore her, especially now, after he tried to warn the maiden away.

**Come, Wyl, tell me what you found.**

**Feed nothing, Black Snake.**

That earned a spike of pain, more as a mild punishment than anything else. He screamed, anyways. He didn't care if she saw that he hurt. There was nothing strong about being stupid.

**I wonder if it was that dark brother of mine,** she slithered around him. **My soul's brother. We are so much alike, he and I.**

Rayek. High Ones, if he or Savah, or High Ones forbid, little Suntop, should come again.

**He's nothing like you,** was all he said.

She laughed.

**So defensive, my little archer.**

He sprang for her, teeth bared.

It hurt, it hurt, it was like being pinned down and having his organs pulled out and examined one by one. He screamed, he wept, and he knew she knew nothing of the little maiden on the side of the mountain.

He would keep it that way.

**Stop, please.**

He felt her pleasure, like a long-tooth playing with a ravvit.

**Please, please, it hurts!**

He would beg. If it kept that maiden safe, he would beg all day.

...

The maiden herself was triumphantly climbing over the edge of a cliff. She'd been nervous at first, fearful of the great birds that swooped overhead, but they didn't even seem to notice her. And her wooden leg, wrapped in Petalwing's webs, was actually a help, instead of a hindrance, holding her up once or twice when she faltered.

“I'd like to see Rayek himself do better!” she whispered to herself. “Now, just to find those bird elves.”

Which, she admitted ruefully, would be easier said than done, as the Hoan G'Tay Sho, with their spears, arrows, and rocks, had shown her.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

She nearly tripped over a huge talon.

“High Ones,” she whimpered.

She had drawn the attention of the bird, and she was huge. Her head was the equivalent to three or four Shen Shens. Her beak was big enough to swallow Ahleki whole, without blinking, and Shen Shen had once warned Ahleki about eagles. Eagles were nothing.

The bird blinked at her, then prodded her gently with her beak.

“Nice birdie,” Shen Shen whispered. “Good bird.”

The bird buffed at her like a huge cat, and Shen Shen found herself stroking the head feathers, then gently, daringly, she scratched her headcrest. The bird chirped, satisfied,bobbing its huge head like a quail.

Shen Shen found herself laughing. No doubt this was a bird that could eat humans, or elves, or even zwoots, but for now it was acting like a sandcat, happy to be petted, on her own terms.

Perhaps that was how the strange elves kept them, then, like cats, with petting and small food.

“Tenspan?”

The bird's head shot up, and Shen Shen noticed for the first time that, for all her grace, she was somewhat stiff, perhaps with age, or illness.

“Tenspan, you old reprobate, what are you up to?” The elf, for it was an elf, laughed as is this were an old game. “Stealing Silverwing's eggs, again? She'll never let you keep them. Haven't you enough of your own?”

The bird squawked, like a great crow, and bobbed her head again. Shen Shen took a deep breath, and the elf came around the corner.

He was tall, nearly as tall as Savah. His skin was pale, like Osek's, for he had no doubt lived within the mountain for many, many eights of years. His face was austerely handsome, with long, white hair, held back by a hairpiece of stylized feathers, in the shape of a bird's wings, with a black stone at the centre.

Obsidian, a part of her whispered, as her eyes traveled downwards to his eyes. Silvery-grey, like the moon against black clouds. They were lovely, he was lovely. Like the ancient legends of the high ones, a being of mist and moonlight.

“Who?” He shook his head. “You are a stranger?”

She was still struck silent, by his lovely grey eyes, his long, slim fingers, and could only nod.

“Where did you come from, lovely one?” He asked. “We Gliders have thought we were alone in the world.”

“I am Shen Shen, daughter of Anatim Sun Toucher, and Toorah. I lived my whole life in the Sun Village, four eights times eight of years,” As she spoke, her mission and her will came back to her. “But since the Sun Village was destroyed, I have lived among the humans of the Red Mountain People. I have heard of the Bird Spirits of the Blue Mountain, who command the worship of the Hoan G'Tay Sho, and came to see if they were elves, like me.”

“Like you?” He shook his head. “My dear, I assure you, there are no elves like you.”

He bowed with a strange gallantry, old fashioned and unpracticed. “I am Voll, Lord of the Gliders.”

Voll, Lord of the Gliders. He was everything else, moonlight, and starlight, and the black night. He was the fulfillment of all her dreams.

“Do you live here, in the Mountain?” She found she had her hand in the crook of his elbow, and he led her through the cavern, with its huge nests, and chirping, great birds, into a long, dark hallway. “You must have shaped it all throughout. I know rockshaping, my friend Osek is a rockshaper, and my daughter.”

“Daughter?” He stared at her. “You have another child?”

She smiled, thinking of Ahleki, with her wild ways, and giggles, and carefree floating.

“Her name is Ahleki. She's nearly eight.”

“Nearly eight?”

“She's not mine by blood,” she grew somber, thinking of Marek and Ahkren, wondering if they'd mind her claiming their little one. “Her parents were lost when our village was destroyed.”

Then what he said hit her, and she stared at him, astonished.

“Another?” She asked.

He was looking at her as if she were the very sun, itself.

“Do you not know what this is, Shen Shen?” He asked. “Can you not feel it?”

Soul meets soul when...

The old song echoed in her head, and she laughed, startled.

“Recognition?”

Voll nodded.

“Shen Shen, you have no idea what a gift you have brought. Not just your lovely self, not just this new child of ours, but hope. You have brought hope to all my people.”

Somehow, they managed to go through that hallway, and another, and another, without encountering anyone, until the reached a great chamber. At its centre, a bed, lined with fur and silk blankets. A young maiden was floating, floating, just like Ahleki, as she wiped the dust from a carving just above the door.

“My Lord Voll,” she floated down, bowed, then her eyes lit on Shen Shen, and she made a comical face of surprise. “Who is that?”

As if remembering her manners, she grew pink, and bowed again. Shen Shen wasn't sure what to do.

“This is the Lady Shen Shen, Ahralree” Voll told her. “She has travelled many, many days, years even, and needs rest, before she addresses anyone.”

“In your chamber,” Ahralree squeaked. “My Lord?”

“She will never rest anywhere else,” he decreed. “Go, tell the others we are not to be seen, or disturbed, until tomorrow.”

“My Lord,” Ahralree stared at her, at him, and their joined hands. “Is it- Is it Recognition?”

At Voll's nod, she swooped overhead, and, like a bird, flew away into the darkness.

It was like a spell was cast. Voll led her to the bed, and unwrapped her jacket, took down her hair. Even her wooden leg, that he took the preserver webs from and removed, caressing the small stump adoringly.

**Beloved,** they sent as one.

...

“Have you heard?” Kureel alighted delicately on a shaped piece of stone above the Raven's Archway. Winnowill paused, indulging him, while she worked on the captive soul within the deep recesses of her mind.

“Well?” She asked Kureel, when he stayed smugly silent.

“A stranger has arrived. Ahralree says Lord Voll himself took her to rest in his chambers. They're Recognized!”

“Oh?” Winnowill felt the animalistic spirit within her shiver in fear. Not for himself. The maiden. He knew of the maiden.

**Keeping secrets, Wyl? Treacherous little pup.**

**I'm not your pet. I owe you a slow death, nothing more.**

“This is a wonder,” she told Kureel. “In fact, I must congratulate the pair.”

“Lord Voll has asked that they not be disturbed until tomorrow,” Kureel said, carelessly. “I'm to take Brightclaw and Aroree. We're to hunt down the meat for her welcoming feast ourselves!”

Kureel had never been very interesting to her. Young, and bright with life, too attached to his bondbirds and the outside world of the hunt and chase. She watched him fly off, and thought.

Before long, the mountain became alive. Ahralree told everyone that the maiden was from another tribe, to the south and west, and that her skin was brown as a human's, her eyes were bright and green, and that her clothes were filthy, so she would need a small robe, but fitted to a maiden, not a child.

Winnowill despised her already.

`“She climbed the mountain to get here,” Vohrenna said, the first words she had spoken in over a century. Winnowill had been so close to collecting her, and now she would have to wait again.

Worse, Lord Voll's Recognition, the new atmosphere. It had sparked a natural Recognition, between Larassaree and Reevol. The two of them could be seen now, filled with joy, laughing.

Children would make Lord Voll think of the future. He would think of the outside.

The Gliders would kill themselves, in an attempt to leave the mountain, and all would be lost.

...

Moonshade took a pair of scissors from Ahnshen, and cut Strongbow's hair off. It was impossible to keep the knots from forming, and now his hair was shorter than Dart's. He looked young, and soft.

She and Rayek moved him, to keep strength in his limbs and to keep his body from forming sores. Leetah came by twice a day to check on him.

She still had her knife.

“I miss you,” she whispered to him. “Dart and Shushen are making something to float on the water. It was Suntop's idea.”

The moons were near full. Soon the fullness would pass.

She told him about Dart and Shushen's water-leaf, based on Suntop wondering if a really big leaf could make an elf float on the lake.

“They need so much pitch, it's all Shushen does these days is make it, praise the High Ones. Dart is using all my and Ahnshen's needles to sew bark together. They made a frame, and all.”

She wiped his face clean of broth.

“Everyone is making fun of them, but I think it will work well.”

She had no more rage left, she found. Just the waiting.

Rayek and Savah honed their craft every day, Rayek with a special zeal. He came and sat with Strongbow anytime he wasn't training. The only way they could get him to sleep was by telling him that he couldn't save Strongbow unless he was at his full strength.

“It's not just Strongbow,” he told Moonshade once, but refused to elaborate further on it.

“Ayooh, of all things pleasant,” she crawled under the blankets with Strongbow, humming the old favourite. “Your love and warmth are best.”

...

“The High Ones smile upon us,” Cutter rocked his son, as he had used to do when Suntop was a baby, which, really, wasn't so long ago. “Ayooah,owoo.”

Leetah came in, looking sullen, angry.

“Is it Strongbow?” He asked her, shifting the sleeping Suntop to another arm.

“No,” She sat down, then sighed, and rubbed her eyes. “No. He's the same as ever.”

It was something else, and judging by the direction she had come from, he could guess the cause. He didn't ask. If she wanted to, she would tell him.

It didn't take long. Still used to Wolfrider habits, Ember and Suntop both fell asleep at noon. Leetah's folk had strange habits, but the making of separate beds for cubs and parents was one that Wolfriders admired.

Leetah made him some Sun Folk food. He was getting used to the cooked meat, even if it was strange. It tasted of spices and salt, rather than itself. Leetah poked at her food, stabbing a few chunks of good root and light-red.

Finally she put her fork down with a sigh.

“I think she wishes I had died instead of Shen Shen.”

Joyleaf was strong within Cutter, thankfully, and he put his bread down.

“I don't think that. She just wishes Shen Shen had never died.”

Leetah shook her head, frowning.

“She doesn't even play with Suntop and Ember. She doesn't eat unless Father tells her, or bathe, unless he takes her to the baths. It's been nearly eight years.”

Cutter took a bite of bread, to chew on with his thoughts.

“Moonshade says that grief takes mothers differently.”

Leetah waved it away.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I know. And I'm wicked to be so cross.”

Her eyes welled up with tears.

“But, she's my mother, too, isn't she?”

Cutter left the food for Nightrunner and Trollhammer, and went around the table to take her in his arms. There wasn't much else he could do for her.

...

Nightrunner crawled into their bed the next day, and never came out. They found him, looking as if he were still sleeping.

“Oh, those bones are much better now, aren't they?” Cutter whispered to the old wolf, once they had him back in the woods. “And you can bite again, no more leftovers for you.”

They howled in the woods, until their throats were sore and their lips were chapped. No one said so, but it was half a howl for someone else, too.

...

Shen Shen woke up, slightly sore, and panicked. She turned away, so Voll wouldn't see it, and covered her mouth so her breaths wouldn't frighten him.

She had dreamed of elf-like birds, of sentient vines, that tried to strangle her. She had dreamed of Osek in the coils of a snake, and of Ahleki in the mouth of an eagle.

Ahleki. Ahleki was barely eight turns, soon, how would she tolerate this intruder?

She had promised Naksima she would come back. Could she bring Voll? Would he come?

Sun bless her, she had no idea what she was doing.

And the child. High Ones, she was barely able to raise Ahleki, and she lost her temper with her far too often. How was she to manage two?

Oh, she was far out of her depth, one little elf-maid, inside a mountain.

“My lady?”

She stood, whirling. Ahralree was floating down from the ceiling, hands full.

“Will you bathe, my lady?” She drew aside a screen in the centre of the room. Shen Shen saw a bath, and became embarrassingly aware that she hadn't bathed, really bathed, since leaving the Red Mountains.

“Thank you.”

Ahralree poured sweet oils in, and showed her the soap, and left. Shen Shen sank into the water, and sighed deeply.

It was too late, now, at any rate. Eyes had met eyes, and that was that. The child would come, and she and Voll would raise it. And she was here, so she would have to do what needed to be done, no matter what.

As she left the bath, she saw that Voll was entering, and despite all that had happened last night, she still found herself blushing and looking aside. He was, after all, a stranger.

...

The wolves stood around, much more casually than the elves did, as if there were no ceremony about to take place. Rayek wasn't even sure what the ceremony was, only that he was wasting time by being here, but since Moonshade had requested that he attend, he was going to do so.

He had dreamed of jackals last night, for the first time in years, since Strongbow had begun to insist they ride Briersting together, to rid Rayek of his fears.

Wing, Ember, Suntop and even little Tyleet were standing outside the wolf den, as if they were waiting. All five of the Wolfrider children, born either just before, or directly after, the arrival of the Sun Folk, just missing- Wait.

“Where is Fog?” Rayek asked Moonshade, more out of curiousity than anything else.

Moonshade nodded to a huge wolf at the edge of the clearing. He was nearly one and a half times bigger than the rest of the pack, almost as big as a young bear, with feet like saucers and huge, white teeth, and Fog was climbing over him, and prodding him and pulling at his fur. The only concession the wolf gave to irritation was to shift, so that he was lying on top of Fog, which made her recede into a trance-like state, watching the other children with vague, blank eyes.

“She named him Steady,” Moonshade murmured. “We used to call him Big.”

“It must be frightening for her parents.”

“It's been a gift,” Moonshade laughed. “Fog likes to wander, so Steady keeps watch on her.”

He had to admit there was value in so fierce a guardian, even if this one seemed to be trying to bathe his charge's ears, which somewhat diminished his intimidation factor.

“I hear you, I hear you!” Ember shouted down the hole. “It's me, it's Ember. Don't you know me?”

She waited, and the soft scuffling noise, and the whimpers, all died down.

“I'm the one you've been calling for,” she laughed. “Come out, new friend! It's time to come out. I can't wait to see you!”

A few more moments passed, and a small grey head, followed by two pointed grey ears, and a curly, wagging tail, exited the wolf den.

“Look!” Ember picked up the cub, and spin him, while he attempted to lick as much of her as possible. “Look at Choplicker, everyone! Isn't he beautiful?”

Everyone agreed that he was lovely, even Wing, whose shoulders had slumped briefly in disappointment. Then the entire group collapsed from still ceremony to comfortable companionship, chatting together.

“Is that all?” Rayek asked Moonshade.

“M-hm.” She sighed, happily. “Strongbow would have wanted to see this. Now he will, through our eyes.”

So, not a waste of time after all, Rayek realized. He was the only one likely to see Strongbow again anytime soon. Moonshade would want him to carry this to the archer, in case he did not return.

“He's a little small.” Fog had managed to escape her guardian, and was eyeing the puppy skeptically. “How are you going to ride him?”

“He'll grow,” Ember shrugged. “One day he'll be big and strong, like Nightrunner.”

“Yes,” Fog nodded, solemnly. “He's Nightrunner's last cub.”

The mood dropped like a stone, for everyone except the cubs, especially Fog, with her unerring ability, famous between two tribes, to say exactly the worst thing at the worst possible time, oblivious to any reaction.

“He's really beautiful,” Wing told Ember, only the slight slump of his shoulders still betraying his disappointment in... not being chosen? Rayek couldn't quite tell.

“I know!” Ember squeezed the cub a bit too tight, then yelped and released him as he nipped her. “Until you get your wolf-friend we'll ride together, okay?”

Wing nodded, evidently cheered by this, and he, Suntop, and Ember began to play with the little wolf. Tyleet toddled back to her father, who picked her up without interrupting his conversation with Minyah in the slightest. Fog and Steady wandered away from the group, toward a patch of brush near the little stream, followed by her elder brother, who took that moment to pounce on the little girl and throw her into the air.

It was all very domestic, and infuriating.

**You want to rescue Strongbow,** Moonshade sent to him. **But we don't have a plan. And Strongbow won't let you take him unless he knows the Black Snake isn't a threat anymore.**

It was irritatingly true, and he nodded, a mere jerk of the head.

“Rayek!” Cutter was making his way through the small crowd, Leetah at his side, and where Rayek had once thought he would hate the other elf forever, he was simply mildly exasperated by the other's bluff, cheerful confidence.

“He's a good cub,” Cutter nodded at Choplicker. “Going to be big, as big as Nightrunner was.”

Leetah was a step behind her lifemate, ever present flowers in her hair, and smiled indulgently at him.

Cutter suddenly fixed his odd, unsettling blue eyes on Rayek.

“You saved Suntop,” he said.

“No,” Rayek was suddenly uncomfortable. “Savah-”

“You saved Suntop,” Cutter interrupted his uncharacteristic moment of modesty. “Thank you.”

“Yes,” Leetah took his hands in hers. “We thank you, Rayek.”

He muttered something, he couldn't have said what, and left. Moonshade walked by his side, silently, through the dark woods, through the delicate shadows of the leaves and branches.

When they got to the hut, Moonshade sat by the bed, and continued her “stick-weaving”, this time with a much thinner thread than before. She was making patterns, too, flowers that seemed to meld with the rest of the fabric so easily that they might have grown in them.

Rayek sat down beside her to meditate.

...

Ahralree brought her a dress, well, a robe that had clearly been cut down and hastily mended, but Shen Shen was grateful for it, anyhow, even though it had to be hiked up over her wooden leg to prevent tripping. Ahralree apologized, advising her that as soon as possible, measurements for her new robes would be taken, which made Shen Shen wince.

Voll told her she looked lovely, and she laughed at him.

“I'm going to look like a child next to your people,” she told him, puffing up her curls as much as she could. Then Ahralree brought her a headpiece, and she sobered, almost instantly.

It was like a bird's wings, but of gold, with a small shimmering stone of white, though flecked with many colours, at the centre.

Shen Shen had once, as many Sun Village children had, tried on Savah's crown. It was lighter than you might expect, but still heavy, as if made of some denser stuff than mere gold.

She had the same feeling from this hair-piece, which was much smaller.

Voll had dressed her this way purposefully, she thought. So that when she addressed his people, she didn't do so as a mere newcomer, but as the Recognized lifemate to their leader. Whatever arrangement she and Voll would come to, he was making an overture now.

It was so kind, so thoughtfully designed, that she had to blink back tears, and some tight knot in her stomach loosened in relief.

The halls were no less dark and cool than they had been during the haze of Recognition. They were intricately and delicately shaped, almost as if in a pattern, and Shen Shen found her eyes following the line of the shaping absently. There were elves now, she saw, he and she elves, all dressed in intricately decorated robes, similar to her own borrowed finery, all tall and pale, as if they, like Voll, saw the sun to seldom for it to have an effect on them, and they bowed to Voll as he passed them. Shen Shen clung to his arm a bit more tightly, and wished she were back in the Red Mountains.

...

 

Strongbow had spent the majority of his life, it seemed, fighting against that which would destroy not only him, but all his people. It had been so since he was a youth. It must be said, therefore, that he was not ill-equipped for this battle.

His misfortune had been fighting with spirit, rather than flesh. In his explorations, and Rayek's, they had never before imagined meeting with evil. Despite Strongbow's natural caution, and Rayek's natural competitiveness, they had little imagined any danger in the Void that gentle Savah entered with ease. It was that which had allowed Winnowill to take hold of him, a mistake that she would live to regret, if he and Rayek had anything to say about it.

The Black Snake held him by his spirit, a hold he still couldn't escape, but she also couldn't escape him. He was like a wolf yet, scenting and stalking, looking through shadows for his escape. He could see now, through her eyes, the maiden, who looked as if she were uncertain how she'd gotten here, and what to do now.

He could feel the Black Snake writhing with rage and hatred. It would be the work of a moment for her to destroy the girl and the child that was not even yet formed within her. Strongbow bit her on the ankle, and ran.

...

Olbar and Selah hurried home with Malek, climbing the ropes he had left at the Deathwater easily. They ran to the village, and found Gardek and Ulma assembling the spears.

“You doubt our little bird-bones?” Olbar asked his nephew.

“I doubt the Bird Spirits,” Gardek corrected him. “And the Hoan G'Tay Sho.”

Selah took up a spear, and swung it experimentally. Malek stood back, until Ulma saw him.

“You!” She pointed. “Boy with the heart of a deer, come and hold the blessing.”

Olbar and Gardek watched her draft him into service, and Gardek chuckled.

“Well, he's clearly welcome back.”

...

Naksima woke up in the middle of the night, and went to look at Ahleki. Osek, who never seemed to sleep, smiled absently at her as she entered, and let her go and hover over Ahleki's small, hanging bed.

Ahleki frowned in her sleep, often, as if she were dissatisfied with the world of dreams. Shen Shen had used to fuss over it, but abandoned it in favour of trying to get her little one to do chores, or to stay closer to the village in her play.

Naksima knew some things about Shen Shen. She had had a family, and a nation, and all were gone. She had been close to her sister, who had powers, like Ahleki had, but different, and suffered her loss greatly. She was a “muh-lee-i”, which was like a healer, but only for pregnant women.

Shen Shen was not human, but she bled, she could die(although she had confided an unbelievably long life to Naksima), and she was small and fragile.

Ahleki stirred in her sleep, and Naksima tucked the blankets around her more tightly.

Osek was standing in the doorway of the house, staring at the moons, which were waning, but still bright.

“A moon's dance and seven days more,” he said, comfortingly, when Naksima joined him.

She made an agreeable sound, and looked at the greater moon. Shen Shen told her that her people called it the Mother Moon, which was ridiculous, since everyone knew the moons were lovers, who had fled to the sky long ago when they were persecuted.

“Do you think she's entered the mountain, yet?” Naksima asked him.

Osek chuckled. “Believe me, if she hasn't, it's only because she made the bird elves come out.”

Naksima sighed.

“She is so small.”

“Shen Shen must go through in order to understand,” Osek responded. “She's the type to know by doing.”

Naksima looked at him, the missing eye, wooden hand and wooden fingers with attachments that Akrom had made in a fit of inspiration, and gave into a weakness of curiousity.

“Osek?” she didn't press on until she had his attention. “What happened to you?”

Osek sighed. “It's a long story, Naksima.”

...

Moonshade cut some fringe into Clearbrook's new tunic.

It was so strange that, even as the tribe had taken up residence in small tree dens just on the outskirts of the village, and even as Strongbow's body lay empty in Rayek's bed, life went on as it always had. In this case, Clearbrook's tunic had torn during a shagback hunt, and now she needed a new one.

She had dreamed last day that Trueflight and Crescent had come to her, demanding to know where Strongbow was, before turning into wolves and running away. She had dreamed

Fog was stubbornly sitting nearby, her rare moment of intensity focused now on her mother's old tunic, which she insisted still contained good materials, that could possibly be used for something or other.

And life continued as it always had done.

Clearbrook was always cool colours to Moonshade. The grey of clouds and water, and the green of leaves under them. Silver accents, earrings and a belt buckle, completed her, and a belt of embroidered silk.

Fog's hair came loose from her braid as she pulled laces out of the old tunic, and fell in a silky, brown veil around her face. One Eye came in, yawning, and began to put the braid back in, much to the little girl's displeasure.

“Braid your own hair!” She snapped, pulling away. The half finished braid fell apart.

“It'll get tangled,” One Eye warned her, clearly continuing an old argument.

“I like tangles,” the little girl shot back. Her entire face was screwed up into a scowl.

“You won't like them when your hair turns into a bird's nest!”

“Yes, I will!”

“Fog, come here so I can braid your hair!”

“You just pull it!”

“Fog!”

They settled into a staring match, parent and child, both in high temper.

Moonshade cut more fringe and tried not to smile.

The conflict ended, finally, when Scouter came in, picked up his sister, and held her, struggling, while their father quickly finished the braid and tied it off.

“I hate you!”

Scouter hopped around awkwardly as Fog kicked him in the shin and ran out the door. His father collapsed on the floor, sighing deeply.

“She's going to kill me one of these days.”

Scouter groaned in assent, and got up to follow his sister.

Moonshade turned to share a smile with Strongbow, remembering another strong willed she-cub, but he was still silent, absent.

The fringe was finished. She turned to the belt.

...

“Is it true? Did you truly climb the mountain to the Aerie?”

That was one of the elves with a pointed hat on, the Chosen Eight that Voll had proudly pointed out to her. She had sprung into the air with her question, and now turned bright red with embarrassment.

“My Lady,” she added belatedly.

Shen Shen understood that, and smiled at the young maiden as brightly as she could.

“I had help from a small friend,” she said, holding up her wooden leg. “I haven't seen it since I arrived, but it made my leg sticky, so I wouldn't fall, and gave me a rope. Then it was just a matter of not looking down.”

“Oh, by the winds,” the maiden floated closer. “How admirable.”

“My name is Shen Shen,” Shen Shen found herself wanting desperately to continue this, the first time she'd spoken to a grown maiden in nearly eight years. “What are you called?”

“I'm called Aroree,” the maiden whirled in the air. “I have the honour of being one of the Chosen Eight.”

“You fly through the air on the air on the great birds, truly?”

Shen Shen was beginning to feel as if she were on the ground with Aroree, making small talk about the weather, lovemates, and the harvest, as she had done with Halek, Ruffel, and Maleen.

“Of course!” Aroree laughed. “We Chosen Eight are the only ones who have the courage and patience to tame the birds! Save yourself, My Lord.”

Voll smiled indulgently at his clearly much younger tribemate.

“The time when I was at one with my bondbird and we rode the winds together are long gone,” he said, warmly. “Now it is the young who go into the outside world, to fetch food and report on the humans.”

“Yes,” Aroree laughed. “Our human friends. They are so amusing.”

“I have human friends, too!” Shen Shen held up her wooden leg. “One of them, Amrok, he made my leg.”

“How lovely,” Aroree complimented her. It was covered with flowers that Amrok and Naksima had painted on with the inside of walnut skins. “He carved it, truly? It must have taken ages.”

“A few weeks,” Shen Shen admitted. “But surely you understand that. I saw one of your fellows with a spear. Amrok makes my legs from the same materials.”

“Oh, those?” Aroree shook her head. “Treeshapers make the spear shafts.”

“ _Tree-_ shapers?” Shen Shen stared at her. “Elves who shape trees, like stone?”

“Oh, yes,” Aroree held out her hands. “You can't float. Would you like me to take you?”

“Please!” Shen Shen held out her hands like a child, then remembered Voll. “If you don't mind?”

He motioned her away with a smile, and Aroree took her high in the air, soft as a whisper.

Her last sight of Voll was over her shoulder, as a tall, black-haired maiden approached him, and of his welcoming smile as he turned away to her.

<O>

Voll was... radiant.

She hadn't seen him this happy since before... Since before.

The little maiden left with Aroree. Winnowill saw the prosthesis under the skirts, and winced. Imperfect, damaged by the outside world. Disgusting.

“Winnowill!” Voll took her by the hands, and embraced her. “You have returned to us!”

“I have not left you,” she protested, mock-offended. “I was simply meditating.”

“Yes, yes,” he sighed. “Egg, again.”

When they had been younger, when they had been other than what they were now, she might have slyly inquired as to whether or not he was jealous. He might have pretended to pout, and she would have reassured him.

But they were what they were. Time had passed, and she had grown, learned, and he, poor, sweet, idealistic he, had remained the same.

She would protect him, she thought. If this small creature and their offspring brought him happiness, then she would allow it. Within reason. The child was young, clearly overwhelmed by her experiences. It would be easy to wrap her in a concoction of careful truths. Rest, food, a new dress, and a few years being among elves again would make her forget the outside world.

She had never had an elfin pet before.

It was not, she thought, upon hearing the poor girl's story, unexpected. Interestingly enough, it was almost an inevitability, that other communities of elves should survive, thrive, briefly, then perish. Of course, that was because they discarded the wisdom of their forbears. Those seemed less damaged than the bestial creature she still held prisoner within her, perhaps equivalent, or slightly superior, to the primitive village the Rayek elf had come from.

Voll was... thrilled by the idea. She saw that, and moved to cut him off at the pass.

“How unfortunate,” she sighed. “All those lives lost. First a quake, then the sandstorm. The poor child was fortunate to survive.”

“But she is here with us, now,” Winnowill allowed herself a small smile and sigh of relief. “Safe with the High Ones.”

“Her people had made a good life out in the desert,” Voll commented, running a hand over one of the statues that Brace had shaped, long before he was Brace. “It's possible that others survived.”

It was possible, Winnowill thought, but highly unlikely, and, anyhow, a search was out of the question. Too many resources to comb an unknown patch of desert for a small spattering of life. Better to remain here. Better to bring the child and the other elf here, to keep the idea of looking out of Voll and Shen Shen's head.

“With no shapers, or floater, or magic users, besides a healer, and a mystic of sorts?” She raised a self-deprecatingly eye brow and smiled wrily. “My Lord, I know you think much of my abilities, but I'm sorry to say they are only useful in the case of injury or illness. Starvation, thirst? We healers can abate such damages, but eventually we, too, succumb.”

“No,” she sighed. “It is a pity, Voll, but Shen Shen's people must have been lost in the desert. We could search a time spanning the length between today and the day that we arrived on this wretched trap of a world, but we could never find them.”

Voll looked for a moment as if he might argue, then he sighed, and moved to walk down the long, torchlit hallway.

“I fear you may be correct,” he murmured. “As much a pity as it is.”

He was still hers. He would still rely on her.

The girl would be easily manipulated. The child and the elder would be too grateful to be among their own kind to be any danger. She would continue to reign supreme within the shadows of Voll's throne.

The beast within her stirred, growling. She stung it into a stupor.

Outwardly, she simply took Voll's hand, and squeezed, comfortingly. She suggested they visit the tailors' room, to see to Shen Shen's new clothes.

...

There was no way to prepare. Savah taught him a few tricks to guard his mind, and the Wolfriders' as a whole gave him a confused jumble of sending tricks he was gradually assembling into a cohesive whole, but as he had no idea how to defeat the dark one, or free Strongbow, and time was beginning to run short.

Strongbow lost weight he could ill afford to lose, a diet of broths and water, and no activity, melting his thin frame. Moonshade and Dart tended to him with the tenderness of those about to face loss.

Rayek watched this, and felt the rare burden of helplessness. He knew a few basic sending tricks, some minor illusions, and that was it. He was going to lose, he was going to lose Strongbow, and he was going to do it in front of everyone.

He was exhausted.

The Wolfriders, still ensconced in tree-shaped burrows at the edge of the woods, stuck like burrs to Rayek's house, clinging to his roof, sitting outside his door, or under his windows, even sitting inside on those rare occasions when Moonshade, or he, had to be absent. They filled the village by nights, with their silent footsteps, and soft guttural accents, and even near silent as they were, by habit, they kept gardeners and gatherers and hunters awake, and the village rhythms began to shift ahead, rising later and sleeping later.

Rayek came home, and nearly tripped over Dart, who was curled up beside the door, staring moodily at his own knees.

“He fought with Shushen,” Moonshade said, while she put a black and red jacket on Rayek, and began tying in laces. “Something about their waterleaf, but when you're that age, every fight is like the end of the world.”

She shrugged as if he should understand, and he supposed he should have, but he had had no such quarrels as a child. Dart, and the other children, and their plethora of near agemates, were a novelty among the Sun Folk. There were over eight and four, including the Wolfrider children, and Treestump and Minyah had recognized again two nights ago.

“I have to do it soon,” Rayek told her, while she cut up a chunk of roasted meat, trying not to make faces at the smell, and handed him some pickled firefruit in a tlaxcalli. “There's not much more we can do to prepare, and if we wait much longer, it'll be bad.”

Moonshade drank some berry juice, and stared out the window, into the night sky. Outside, some Wolfrider child was cajoling Dart to leave his sulk, and join them in some child game. They were too young to be thoughtful.

“You should go to bed,” Moonshade drew back the blankets next to Strongbow. “I'll keep watch through the night.”

“I need to do more work,” Rayek protested, but Moonshade shook her head, smiling slightly.

“You won't do any work unless you sleep, dear friend.”

She took his headband off and used her fingers to loosen his hair, then gently urged him to bed.

“Sleep now,” she insisted. “I'll keep watch.”

...

Shen Shen had enjoyed her time in the “green house” at first, with the gentle, soft voiced treeshapers, and the smell of flowers, fruits, and leaves, while Aroree and she chatted about their favourite fruits and how the clearstone above the gardens let in the sun, but kept the rain and snow and wind out. Then the huntress was summoned away, and the tree-shapers, all of them quiet, polite, but firm, had no time to converse, nor would they allow her to assist them, even though she had been used to doing so in the past.

“It would be quite improper for us to allow the lifemate of Lord Voll to assist us,” One lad exclaimed, guiding her to a bench, shaded by a tree on one side, lit overhead by the clearstone, and facing a small pool of water, with an elaborate fountain in the middle.

“And to allow the lifebearer to perform such heavy labour?” A maiden with a heavy armful of bird dung shook her head, clearly aghast.

“And, well, with your leg,” a tall elf of indeterminate gender shook their head, pityingly, and left.

Well, she thought, chewing on the mix of berries that had been left beside her by a shy, silver-haired elf who had flitted away as soon as she had received the gift, it wasn't as if she wanted to spread fertilizer, but it would have been nice to have been given the choice.

There were fish in the pool. Huge, silvery, and completely blind. Shen Shen pulled off her shoe, and tapped the water with the top of her foot. The fish swirled around it, some mouthing at her toes with toothless gums. She laughed, and tossed in some berries, which they ate ponderously.

“Be careful.”

A rich, female voice intruded, and she drew her foot back hurriedly, as if she had been caught in some childish mischief.

The same tall, pale maiden who had been with Voll when she left him was standing over her now. She had a sly, friendly smile on her face, the kind of smile that older girls shared with younger ones when they were getting into trouble.

“I only meant that Alrinnee will have both our heads if we give the fish too many sweets. He says it spoils the taste,” She sat down beside Shen Shen, folding impossibly long, white legs under the bench. “I'm Winnowill.”

“Shen Shen,” then she laughed at herself. “Of course, you must have known that.”

“You do have rather a striking presence, my dear,” Winnowill leaned back sinuously, and smiled at her. “And such a tale of adventure!”

“No, no!” Shen Shen protested. “I don't know what Voll told you, but I just- Well, I wanted to live.”

“Ah, but isn't that the best adventure?” Winnowill smiled, a bit sadly. “After all, so few live to tell of it.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then Winnowill turned to one side, and pulled a bundle of clothing out.

“You quite inspired the tailors,” she said, and shook the bundle out, revealing a black dress, with heavy, round embroidery, spots and crescents that Shen Shen realized were meant to symbolize feathers. Not the long, straight feathers of hawks, but the rounded, colourful accents of chickens and quails. “I don't believe I've seen them work so quickly in octuries. Isn't it lovely? I insisted on bringing it to you, myself.”

“It's lovely. Thank you,” Shen Shen took it, and stared.

Her cedar dress, woven by Naksima, with her clumsy assistance, embroidered with spruce roots, was nearly worn to pieces. She'd meant to ask Naksima to make her a new one, in exchange for winter's breath tea. Her old cloud flower dress, made years before by Ahnshen, had fallen to pieces only a year or so after the ground-quake, replaced by Nakshima again and again.

She hadn't had a dress like this in years, perhaps her entire life. The waist drawn in tightly, the top done in smocking. The skirt was full, the sleeves long and floating.

It was soft, too, like the moth-cloth she had worn for special occasions in the Sun Village.

“My dear, you're crying!” Winnowill laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Don't you like it?”

“Of course,” Shen Shen wiped her eyes. “I'm sorry, I've just- I've never had anything like it. Not since...”

“Not since you lost your family.” Winnowill embraced her, sighing. “Poor child. To have been alone so long.”

“Well,” Shen Shen thought of Ahleki, Osek, and also Naksima and Akrom and little Shenkir. “I wasn't quite alone.”

“Oh, yes, your child, Voll told me you had a little girl,” Winnowill took the dress back from her. “Come, let's go to your chambers, and see how it looks.”

“You have a little girl, and another companion, yes?” Winnowill asked, leading her through another ornate, dark corridor. “When will they be coming?”

“I don't know,” Shen Shen admitted. “I told Ahleki that I'd be back within two full turnings of the Mother Moon, so I suppose I'll have to return soon.”

“Really?” Winnowill blinked at her. “My dear, you really must stay here. After all, the first few months are a very delicate time.”

Shen Shen giggled at that familiar remark.

“You sound like my sister Leetah,” she said, remembering. “Leetah would tell all mothers to rest, only do light chores, walk in the gardens and smell the sweet flowers, but at the end of the day, the gardens need weeding, the clothes need washing and the crops need to be brought in.”

Winnowill shook her head, and they began to argue, companionably. As she had done once with Leetah. The other Gliders retained a respectful distance, much like they had with Voll, but they had only come a little closer when she had been with Aroree, so she didn't mind much.

Winnowill stayed while she changed, and Shen Shen didn't miss her grimace as she pulled her hand-me-down dress off, over her wooden leg. She paused, and went to Winnowill, sitting down and holding the leg up.

The other maiden stared at it. Shen Shen admitted that even now it looked strange to her, especially as she pulled the wooden leg off, where the flesh, scarred and sewn inwards, was marked by the firm straps that had to hold the leg on tightly, straps that even travelled up, circling her waist in an odd sort of girdle.

Naked, she removed the leg, and watched Winnowill school her face back into a pleasant smile, although her eyes remained fixed to the stump.

“You can touch it, if you want,” Shen Shen offered. “It doesn't hurt, just sometimes, in the rain, or if I'm sleeping.”

She picked up the leg. The copper pegs and oak that made up the knee, and the lower limb. The hinged foot, with straps, all the careful strings, made up of cat gut, that made the whole thing move almost like a real limb.

Winnowill's hands shook as she reached out, and her face underwent an odd transformation, from slightly horrified, to a strange sort of eagerness, and that quickly fell away as she entered a trance-like state that Shen Shen knew well.

The strange, almost fuzzy sensation of healing magic flooded the room, and Shen Shen watched. Of course, nothing could be done, really. Even Leetah would never have been able to restore what was lost.

The healing aura turned strange, cold. Shen Shen wanted to withdraw, put her leg, and this beautiful dress back on. Winnowill shuddered, and her lips moved, as if she were speaking to someone, not Shen Shen, someone-Had she fallen asleep? Was it a nightmare?

And, very softly, as if from far away, she heard shouting, and a wolf howling.

Winnowilll jerked away, out of her trance, releasing the leg.

“Well,” she smiled, and began to help Shen Shen put the leg back on. “I must admit, my dear, this will take some time.”

The cold aura fell away, the shouting and howling died in an instant.

“Time?” Shen Shen stammered. “But the leg is gone!”

“It is,” Winnowill agreed, helping her to attach straps to the girdle again. “But with time, patience, I believe I might be able to regrow it.”

Shen Shen stared at Winnowill in wonder. The other maiden simply smiled, and held out the dress, so she could slide it over her head.

The room was slightly dark, lit by a skylight, that showed soft, white clouds, and a few lamps. The bed was behind a screen, there was a table with openings in it to store things, clothing and the like, and a few tapestries. Winnowill drew one of these aside after Shen Shen dressed, revealing the largest mirror Shen Shen had ever seen.

The dress was lovely. Black, with brightly coloured patches of shimmering embroidery. Shen Shen laughed, thinking it looked better than every festival dress she'd ever worn, needing only her eye-paint and rouge to complete the look.

“You look lovely,” Winnowill complimented her. “Every bit the Glider lady. A bit small, perhaps, but it adds to your allure.”

Shen Shen grinned into the mirror, tried to twirl, and stumbled. The skirt still swirled around her, and the sleeves fluttered like butterflies, and she laughed, as Voll entered, and his eyes lit up.

“Oh,” he caught her hands in his, as if afraid she might fall. “How-how do you like the dress?”

“It's lovely,” she didn't feel shy, she realized, as she had before. Voll looked so handsome, wise, old, but he spoke like a new lovemate, stumbling queries, and that was familiar ground to her. “It's the prettiest dress I've ever had.”

“And it fits well?” He asked.

“Vohrenna and her assistants made it to perfection,” Winnowill snorted, and when Shen Shen turned to look at her, she was laughing softly at them. “Thanks to your, ah, thorough measurements.”

“Winnowill,” Voll turned bright red, and Shen Shen felt the blood rise in her cheeks. “My dear friend. Supper is ready.”

“And so my Lord dismisses me,” Winnowill stood, and swept from the room, only pausing to smile at Shen Shen once more. “I'll see you soon, my dear.”

...

It was even better than she had hoped. In fact, the child was charming in her simplicity of manner, her open smile. Unlike the Gliders, who had turned to deceit and manipulation as much to pass the time as to gain power, Shen Shen meant what she said, and didn't know what use her eyes were, yet.

Winnowill found she didn't want the girl to lose that simple, open smile, those large, artless eyes.

A pity about the leg, but that was a puzzle she could solve, given time. And, after all, she had all time, and would have all time, if the Egg was correct.

She might have to speed up the clock, but four more passengers made very little difference. Larrassaree's child could be a playmate for Shen Shen's. It would keep them out from underfoot, until they were old enough to be of use.

She didn't notice the small, gossamer-winged creature that flitted, high over head, sneaking through an opening too small for even the smallest elf, into Voll and Shen Shen's chambers.

...

“I thought you might like to go to dinner,” Voll said. “I mean, dinner with all of us, or not all of us. A few of us meet for supper at this hour every night, and I thought, well, I invited a few more to welcome you.”

There were tables everywhere, even suspended in mid-air, with elves of all kinds, most eating, some serving, some playing music, while others sang wordless tunes, sinuous and sad. Aroree was there, and the rest of the Chosen Eight, and a girl named Larassaree, the lifemate of one of the Eight, who was also pregnant, and who had been seated at her side.

“Is everyone treating you like you're made of glass, too?” Shen Shen tried for solidarity, and Larrassaree giggled, handing her a glass of juice.

“Winnowill allows us no wine,” she said, grinning. “She says it damages the child.”

“I'll stay pregnant if it means I don't have to drink that stuff,” Shen Shen made a face. She could smell it from clear across the table, like rotten berries, and it nearly made her stomach turn. Thankfully, Voll had noticed her discomfort, and asked for water.

Larrassaree laughed again, and put a hand on her belly.

“You won't feel it for quite some time,” Shen Shen told her. “Not for some months, at any rate.”  
“I know,” Larrassaree sighed. “I know, I'm just so happy.”

Oh. Yes. That was the normal reaction. Not this gut-dropping terror that Shen Shen felt every time she remembered. Happiness. There were so few elves in the world, etc, etc. She was lucky. She should be overjoyed.

Larrassaree looked blissful. Reevol, beside her, was also beside himself with joy.

Shen Shen ate some of the fish. It was delicious.

...

Strongbow could feel himself beginning to weaken. Only days past, he had nearly felt strong enough to pull away, but it was as if he were in a snare, and everytime he tried to wriggle away, it grew tighter.

**The maiden is very similar to your friend, is she not?**

The Black Snake was sipping a drink, and politely ignoring her friend, who was still enamoured of his new lifemate enough to simply stare at her, and be content.

Strongbow shook his head.

**You don't think so?**

Strongbow bit her, and felt her smile as she ripped pieces off of him.

He knew her. Child harmer. Mate killer.

He was going to eat her, he thought, as she muzzled him.

And yet, during the trance, when she had been touching the girl, he had stopped her. All his carefully hoarded strength, he had used it to fight her. All for nothing. Now Shen Shen was still trapped, and he was dying.

...

The Wolfriders had decided that night was the night to hold one of their strange ceremonies of story-telling and song, and that the centre of the village was the place to hold it. Of course, a few people objected, but they were somewhere between midsummer and harvest, and they needed cheering up, so they were quickly over-ruled. Rayek had shaken his head, and turned to his hut, intent on trying, once again, to puzzle his way out of Strongbow's predicament, but Moonshade had shaken her head.

“A howl, and fresh eyes tomorrow, Rayek,” she had insisted. “And I want you to show this to Strongbow, when you see him.”

Rayah and the other Sun Folk children, including Rainsong and Woodlock's growing brood, were overjoyed at the chance to stay up late. Maleen and her hunters went out with Cutter and the Wolfriders, coming back with shagback, dashers, and plenty of small prairie hens. Fires were lit, to the nervousness of the Wolfrider elders, and early fruits and vegetable were picked from the gardens, to all be served with well water, cider, and nuts and berries that the Wolfriders brought in.

One Eye told the story of how his son and daughter had fallen into a mud pit a few days ago, while they both glared at him, and his lifemate laughed. Then Tyleet sang a song about how Newstar moved like a willow tree, and that blushing near-grown girl countered with one about Tyleet being as sweet as berries warmed by the sun. Suntop got into the spirit of things by singing a song about how his sister was a pest worse than a squirrel in a storehouse, and then had to hide from her behind Leetah.

Pike had never struck Rayek as being of much interest. He was short, and constantly addled on the dreamberries the Wolfriders were so fond of. For all their obvious fondness of him, even the Wolfriders seldom seemed to respect him.

That all changed when he stepped forward into the circle of elves at the centre of the village. The Wolfriders grew silent, and, slowly, the Sun Folk followed suit.

Dreamberries seemed to appear from no where, passed from hand to hand. Wolfriders showed them how to eat them, and Moonshade held one to Rayek's lips as she ate hers. Dart was with his father, so she could show him this.

So he could show Strongbow, he realized.

“In the time before the time of Huntress Skyfire, before the Way, in the time when the Wolfriders and the High Ones lived side by side, there was a daughter of Timmorn, a She Wolf.”

The story went on, told the tale of a maiden who searched within herself and the world, until she was able to balance the mirrored sides of her nature. It was beautiful, wild, and in Pike's voice and the haze of the berries, Rayek could see it, see her, part wolf, part elf, part moon, part stars. He could see her wandering the woods alone, see her hunting with her siblings. He saw her name, the secret name that Wolfriders alone had, and he saw the sun. It filled his eyes, dazzling him.

“Have I failed?”

The She Wolf stood before him, lovely and wild.

“Have I failed?” She repeated. “To love them, all of them?”

He stared at her.

“Have I failed? Have I failed? HavIfailedHaveIfailedHaveIfailed...Ayooah!”

The She Wolf, suddenly a jackal, pounced, and he ran, a twelve year old again, pursued by jackals. He ran, and the desert appeared, and disappeared, the sun and moons rose and set, and he ran. He ran through the woods, in spring, summer, fall, winter, the forest burned and regrew around him, and still he ran.

He couldn't say how long he ran, just that he stumbled at some point, and waited for the jackals to set on him, but all that happened was that one of the wolves poked her nose under his arm, whining.

“You can make a new bow,” A tall, slim maiden raised her bow, and loosed an arrow to the west. “You cannot make a new son.”

“Or a new father!” Her companion, a small, purple-eyed girl, alike enough in looks to the other that family had to be involved somewhere, loosed another arrow, this one to the east.

“I'm sorry?” Rayek stood, and looked around. The wolves withdrew.

A smaller, still slim, elf looked up from where he was chipping an arrow-head, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“What for?” He asked, casually.

“I mean,” Rayek looked around. “Where am I?”

“Everywhere,” the elder maiden said.

“Nowhere,” the younger retorted.

“You're within the sphere of the world,” the male elf said, calmly. “The land that Samael saw.”

“You don't belong here,” a voice behind him, feral and gutteral, was all the warning he had, but it was enough, and he whirled, spinning himself into the air as he did.

The wolf was huge, with large yellow eyes.

“Why are you here?” It asked.

“I don't know,” Rayek raised himself higher. He wasn't in the familiar woods near the village. He wasn't in the woods, the trees were both there and not, the plains were open and empty, the hills were tall, and blocked the sky. The moons were yellow.

“Climb on my back,” The wolf suggested, when he floated down. His voice was not unkind. “Your kind don't belong here. This is the world.”

He hesitated, but then the elder she-elf stepped forward, and put her hand on his shoulder. “You won't find what you're looking for here, cubling.”

He looked into her eyes, and her eyes were brown, and calm, and bright, and familiar.

“Help my son, Rayek,” she told him.

The little maiden and the male elf waved to him as he left. The elder simply stood, and watched him.

The woods, the hills, the plains, the mountains faded away.

The wolf stopped before a door. The door was in a never ending wall, with no end, or top, or bottom.

He dismounted. He did not fall.

The wolf, when he turned to look at it, had vanished. Behind him, the door swung open with a whoosh.

A tall, yellow-eyed, golden-haired, impossibly lovely elf stood in the door. His voice, when he spoke, was that of the wolf.

“Enter.”

It was lovely. A world of colours. A land of beautiful everything. It was infinite, stars in every direction. It was as if he were home, and yet, he had never been here. But it was his. That much he knew, with a certainty that surprised even him.

And crowded. Elves everywhere, clad in impossible loveliness, in safe repose, engaged in conversation.

The golden elf led him through the crowd, some of whom greeted them, others of whom glared coldly at them. He seemed to see neither, as focused as Briersting on a hunt. The brightness, the stars, all faded, and the elves who populated the little crowd were all either silent, or murmuring silent to themselves.

“Here she is,” Rayek's guide stopped in front of a maiden with long, brown hair. “You came the closest?”

“Strangleweed,” she said, dispassionately. “I never thought of her paralysing me first.”

She looked at Rayek, eyes distant.

“It seemed so important at the time,” she noted, as if discussing a childhood fancy. “But I am

here, and so is he. It hardly seems to matter, anymore.”

“I don't know if you can defeat her by any means,” she walked away, leading him and the golden elf into a crowd of tall, slim elves, all of them blank eyed and cool as she. “She lies, and she tells the truth, and her lies are the truth, and her truths are all lies.”

“An accident,” a young man murmured. “An accident, accident, accident...”

“A cage, so simple, a cage,” a woman paced back and forth, eyes haunted. “I didn't know what she would use it for. He was so small. So big, but so small.”

And a child, blunt of feature and stocky, but beautiful in the way all children were, surfaced in the back of Rayek's mind. He swallowed, and followed his guide.

“You cannot kill her!” A young male elf with huge, haunted eyes, and hands covered with blood, grabbed at Rayek's robe, stopping him. “I tried. She made me kill, but I tried to stop her. Her spirit will only be free to destroy us all!”

“Enough, Galen,” the woman stopped and dislodged him. “He is not here to stay.”

“He wouldn't be here at all, if not for your kind,” an angular, sullen young man directed that at the yellow-haired elf behind Rayek. “Always meddling, always making. Samael's get.”

Rayek's guide rolled his eyes.

“Enough,” their guide had brought them to the centre of a small crowd of elves. “All of you.”

**What's happening, Alina?**

**What's happened? Who's the stranger?**

**What's happened?**

**Enough!** She whirled in place, and Rayek swore to himself that the ghosts of leaves and vines were whirling with her and he lost his patience, and turned on the yellow-eyed elf behind him.

“I have been patient enough,” he snapped. “You said you could help me rescue Strongbow! Tell me how, now!”

“Rescue him?”

A yellow-haired girl who was smaller than the rest, clad in a brown leather tunic darted through the crowd, to stare at him in astonishment.

“Rescue him from what?” She asked. “What's happened to Strongbow?”

“He's been captured,” Rayek told her, wondering what was so familiar about the curl in her hair, the frame of her face. “By someone named Winnowill.”

“Winnowill, oh, your friend is lost to you, little one,” someone behind them moaned. “No one escapes the Black Snake.”

“Perhaps,” Alina said, standing in the centre of the crowd, one long finger on her chin, a calculatedly undramatic pose. “That is because we all tried to escape.”

Everyone stopped. Even Rayek found himself waiting, drawn to her.

“Strangleweed,” she held up her hand, and an image appeared, of her, tangled in the flesh-eating vines, one lodged tightly around her throat, her tongue protruding grotesquely. A familiar shadow stood just far enough away that you could make her shape out.

“The more you struggle, the more tightly it ensnares you,” Alina continued. “Until breath and life are lost, and your rotting corpse becomes food for its seeds. An ingenious plant.”

“But what has that to do with us?” Asked Galen, wringing his hands, while drops of blood fell on the ground. “Or Winnowill?”

“We struggled to defeat Winnowill,” Alina turned her eyes to the floor, self-deprecatingly. “Some of us unwisely attempted it alone.”

“Oh, speak honestly, Alina,” the pacing woman stopped, and turned her haunted eyes on Rayek. “Some of us did not even try.”

“What about Strongbow?” The little maiden said, eyes wide and frightened. She was joined by another maiden, so alike they had to be mother and daughter, who stayed silent, but nodded in agreement.

“Patience, little one,” Alina dismissed her concerns. “We all struggled, whilst Winnowill twined herself more and more around the mountain, more and more around the Gliders, until she strangled us, and fed on our bodies, fed on our pain, but, what if we had not struggled?”

“What?” Galen laughed. “You mean, just allowed her to continue?”

“None of us said anything!” Alina glared at her compatriots. “We all stayed silent, because we feared no one would believe us, because we were ashamed. And we deserved to be ashamed, because the moment we remained silent, her seeds landed in our corpses, and we began to feed her.”

There was a long silence.

“But Alina,” Galen shook his head. “It's too late. We must remain here.”

“Until now there has been no escape,”Alina said. “Even Timmorn's get find themselves faded in the outside, and none of them can take us with them. But, this Rayek? He's different, isn't he, Timmorn?”

Timmorn. Strongbow had once recited a line of chiefs, going back to the primal roots of his people, to the Firstcomers. And one Firstcomer had had a son, who begat a daughter, who begat a son, and so on and so on, until, eight and one generations later, Cutter, blood of eight and two chiefs.

Rayek turned, and stared at Timmorn, who smiled sardonically, little resembling the misty, fur-covered, image Strongbow had projected. This was an elf who was tall, with dark skin, nearly as dark as Rayek's own, and large, golden eyes, long, honey-coloured hair.

“I asked my sons and daughters to bring you here, once the dreamberries caught hold of you,” he explained. “I suppose I must apologize, on their behalf. They are much of the world, and little considered the effect their spirit-selves would have on you. Trueflight will have many hard words for me.”

“Trueflight?” Rayek felt as if he were floating in a storm.

“Strongbow's mother,” the elder blonde maiden said.

_“Help my son, Rayek.”_

He looked around. The stars had begun to return as the small crowd stood together, looking purposeful, in stark contrast to their earlier madness.

“Where am I?” He asked, hesitantly.

“You are in a fire,” Alina said, calmly. “That is to say, you are of the fire.”

“A metaphor,” Galen added. “A spirit is a flame. We are all flames, and all fire.”

“Many flames, and one fire,”another added.

“We will assist you in freeing your friend,” Alina told him, taking his hand. “But you are the only one who can provide the way.”

“And once you do,” she continued. “There will be no more lies, no more half-truths. We will bring Voll all the truths, and Winnowill will go back to the shadows, where she belongs.”

“Good luck, Rayek!” The little blonde maiden hugged him, and he suddenly remembered the one and only time he had seen her before, in Treestump's arms, as he grieved for his, then, only living child.

“Simply hold our hands,” Alina said. “Time draws short, and we will journey with you.”

“Back to the world,” Galen said, calmly. “To set things right.”

He reached out, hesitantly, and they latched on, swift as fire. Then, as if he were being swept down a rushing river, he was gone. Away from the stars, and the light, and he wept, as if losing something he had never known he had. As he wept, Alina reached out and wiped his tears away.

**Don't be sad, Rayek. You'll return here, one day. One way or another.”

 


	3. I Shall Fear No Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strongbow's rescue is initiated. Voll finds Petalwing, and confronts Winnowill, but it goes terribly, terribly wrong.

...

“Rayek!” Moonshade was shaking him. Leetah had her hands on his head, and was staring down at him fearfully.

 _She's quite pretty,_ Alina said.

Rayek sat up. Cutter was arguing with Pike over something, Maleen with him, glaring down at the little Wolfrider, who had his hands up placatingly.

“What are they fighting about?” he asked.

It was Moonshade who answered, as Leetah was holding his head and forcing him to look into her eyes.

“You collapsed, while we were listening to the story. I thought you'd fallen asleep, Rayek, I'm sorry.”

 _Who is she?_ Galen asked, idly.

“Great sun, Rayek!” Leetah ran a hand over his head. “It's as if your brain is on fire.”

“What?” He tried to push her hand back, then fell. “No, we're alright.”

“We?” Leetah touched him again. “Rayek, did you hit your head earlier?”

 _Look at all the elves!_ Someone exclaimed, excitedly, and Rayek felt his eyes dart over the crowd, which, while small compared to the previous population of the Sun Village. _The outside world didn't kill them all._

“Oh,” Rayek winced, and closed his eyes, shaking his head. _Wouldn't you have known that?_

 _Well, there's knowing, and then there's seeing,_ Alina shot back. _This is wondrous, Rayek. Open your eyes again._

“I didn't bring you here to gawk at my people,” he snapped. “I brought you here to help my friend.”

“Rayek, you'd better lie down,” Maleen said, worriedly. “You sound... sick.”

“I'm not sick,” he said, trying to get up. “I went to the-the- I went to a strange place, full of stars. There were elves. They said they could help me get Strongbow back, but I don't understand how.”

“Bad dreamberries,” that was Pike, who looked apologetic. “He just needs to sleep it off. I thought I sorted them all.”

“It was my fault,” Redlance said, holding a handful of berries. “It's not the season, we were almost out, so I pushed one of the bushes. I guess I pushed too hard.”

“You're a tree-shaper?” Rayek was pushed to the back as Alina spoke.

“Um,” Redlance looked a little aghast. “Yes?”

“How marvelous!” Alina exclaimed. “Have you ever worked with strangleweed?”

“Strangleweed is dangerous,” Redlance said, and helped Rayek up. “Rayek, I think you'd better lie down in your hut and let Leetah look after you.”

“Oh, yes,” Alina looked down at Rayek's body. “I had almost forgotten.”

“Get back!” Rayek shouted at her. Alina retreated, but so did Redlance, looking slightly frightened.

“No,” Rayek held out his hand. “I didn't mean you, I meant her.”

“Her?”

“Rayek, you need to rest,” Leetah pressed her hand against his forehead, this time using her powers. “You might have- By the mid-day fumes!”

“What is it, Leetah?” Maleen was already pushing Rayek towards his hut.

“It's as if Rayek's mind, it's not one mind, it's many! There are other spirits inside him!”

...

“I don't get it,” Cutter admitted, finally. “How are you not bursting open?”

Rayek chose to ignore the imagery, although Galen found it hilarious, and thought Cutter was the most handsome elf he'd ever met, Alina was distracted by the vine that had begun to inch its way in through the window, and the others had all their own concerns and considerations, and tried to explain it, pretending he was speaking to Strongbow.

“I went to a place of many spirits.”

“After you ate the dreamberry,” Cutter nodded.

“Yes,” Rayek said. “They claim they can help me free Strongbow.”

“To be more precise,” Alina interjected. “Our goals and Rayek's fly along the same path. What we propose is more of a distraction, which will allow us to defeat Winnowill. That will weaken her long enough for Rayek to free your comrade, and return him to his body.”

“You said you'd help me free him!” Rayek exclaimed, stung.

“And we will,” Alina replied. “This is the method.”

“It's not just Strongbow who's in danger,” the maiden who shaped the cage told them. “Eights of eights of lives are at risk. This will allow us to save them all.”

“I don't understand what you mean,” Moonshade said. “What does this have to do with Strongbow?”

Alina sighed.

“Just this,” she said. “It darkness that allows Winnowill to flourish. Not in the manner of an absence of light, but rather in the sense of ennui, despair. She feeds on it, whether by purpose of will, or by-”

“You have no intentions of helping me break Strongbow free at all,” Rayek interrupted her. He was furious, anger scraping along his skin like frostbite. “You don't have a plan, at all.”

“We have your plan,” Alina shrugged. “To be fair, it's not as if this have ever been done before.”

“That we know of,” Galen added, looking at Cutter's biceps, and pretending not to.

“That we know of,” Rayek rolled his eyes. “You mean, she's never held any spirits prisoner before?”

“Oh, she's done that,” another spirit, not Alina, or Galen, said, twisting Rayek's mouth, bitterly. “Every so often, she told me of it. She would meditate, seek them out. I think the first one was an accident, but the others...”

“No one's ever tried to rescue them before,” Galen said, softly. “You're the first.”

“I don't think anyone knew how to rescue the others, either.”

“Then,” Moonshade wrapped her arms around herself, miserably. “We're back where we started from.”

“Not exactly,” Alina told them, smugly. “At the very least, we have numbers.”

“When many can act as one, they become big.” Cutter nodded, looking relieved. “That, I understand.”

“I don't- Strongbow!”

Moonshade rushed to her lifemate's side.

“He isn't breathing!”

“Oh, high ones,” Leetah ran to them, and, placing her hands on his chest, entered a deep trance.

The room fell silent. Cutter went to stand at his lifemate's side, and began to wipe away the sweat on her brow. Rayek watched as Strongbow's chest began to rise and fall again, and wondered how long it had been still. Alina and her folk stayed silent, respectful behind his eyes. Moonshade began weeping, and Dart whispered comforting lies to her.

“Rayek,” Leetah stared down at Strongbow as she spoke, voice slow with exhaustion. “Whatever you do, you must do it soon. Tonight, if possible. Strongbow's heart will not bear this again.”

Now, that ephemeral Wolfrider blend of inevitability and necessity, made up his mind.

 _We go tonight,_ he commanded the spirits within himself. They quivered in eager answer.

Moonshade held her son in one arm, and Rayek saw her put her other hand on her knife.

The morning sky was throwing pale blue light over her, and she took his breath away with a sudden loveliness.

 _Oh,_ Galen whispered. _Oh, I see._

Rayek ignored him, and planned an attack.

<O>

Shen Shen was dreaming. She knew it was a dream, for her body was whole, and she stood over a prone Winnowill, who was giving her instructions.

“Now, the knife must be very hot,” Winnowill pulled her skirt up, over her knee. Her leg was a rotting mess, and it was spreading, even as Shen Shen put the blade to skin.

“Good, good,” Winnowill praised her.

Shen Shen began to saw through the limb, but the rot was spreading, already above the cut, the thigh was blackening. Shen Shen moved the knife higher.

“It won't do any good.”

Shen Shen looked over her shoulder. The elf behind her was tall, with long, auburn hair, and a wolf at his side, but he was pale, transparent in spots. He pointed to Winnowill, and when she turned back, she saw the other maiden's face begin to grow grey and lose colour. Her eye popped and flowed down her cheek.

Winnowill saw her looking, and tried to smile reassuringly, tearing open her cheek, revealing teeth and a jawbone.

“Whatever is the matter, dear?”

Something grabbed her from behind, yanking at her hair.

Shen Shen woke, stifling a scream.

“Petalwing find pretty-round high thing! Petalwing so happy!”

“Oh,” Shen Shen winced at the screeching creature's noises, and its grip on her curls. “Hello, Petalwing.”

“Hmm.” Voll sighed, and stirred, sitting up. “Shen Shen, what- Oh!”

“Haha,” She tried laughing, but the strange look on his face didn't fade. “This is Petalwing.”

“Ooooh!” Petalwing finally let go of her hair, and fluttered over to Voll, clinging to his face, instead. “Oldold highthing miss Petalwing?”

“You know him?” Shen Shen asked, feeling a bit thrown, before turning her attention to Voll. “You know these bugs?”

“Oh, yes,” Voll reached up and caressed the little creature. “Petalwing and its friends left us long ago, to live in the outside world.”

“Longblackhair highthing tell Petalwing and friends go outside, make wrapstuff food, wait for high things.” Petalwing sighed, and fluttered down to crouch despondently on a cushion. “Petalwing wait and wait.”

“Long black hair,” Voll thought of it. “But, why would Winnowill?”

A soft, mournful sound began to wind its way into the room. Shen Shen wondered if the Gliders had set up another celebration, then remembered the hushed tales of Hoan G'Tay Sho sacrifices.

“The humans!” She grasped Voll's hand, forcing him to look at her. “Voll, whatever Winnowill has done, or not done, it doesn't matter. My friends, Naksima, I told her I would try to stop the Hoan G'Tay Sho from sacrificing. There's already been a war because of it. They dwindle with every sacrifice, you must stop them.”

“The Hoan- Of course, the humans,” Voll was already climbing out of bed, and running a comb hastily through his hair. “Winnowill will be there. She welcomes the humans who come to live with us, and takes them somewhere into her chambers.”

Another elaborate dress, this one with a red-black tint, and gold sun accents at the skirt, was near the bed, and Shen Shen threw it over her head, ignoring the elaborate collection of ribbons and loops, in favour of tying them in a knot at her side.

She held Voll's hand as they ran together, but after a moment, he simply lifted her into his arms, and leapt into the air, literally flying down the maze of cavernous halls. They went so fast, Shen Shen was soon lost. She could only look back, over Voll's shoulder, and cling to him, as the caverns flew by.

There was almost no one in the hall they entered, just Winnowill, a maiden seated over an empty expanse of stone, and a tall, strange looking elf, equipped with a fleshy crest, and folded wings. Shen Shen reminded herself not to stare, as Voll floated them down.

“Winnowill!”

Winnowill turned, raised a slightly surprised eyebrow, and smiled.

“Have you brought Shen Shen to meet our new humans?”

Shen Shen didn't like something about Winnowill's phrasing, but she supposed, if you hadn't truly lived among them, didn't know them, it was inevitable that one might be a little patronizing towards them. The other maiden didn't look angry, just patient.

“Winnowill,” Shen Shen wriggled down and ran to her. “You mustn't let the humans continue these sacrifices. They've already fought many battles over it, and I fear that another may come in the future. Their numbers dwindle with every group they send in the mountain.”

“But how can we refuse?” Winnowill asked, looking slightly shocked. “They wish to come here, after all. It is their great honour to come and serve the Bird Spirits.”

Shen She thought about it.

“Some years ago,” she asked, trying not to be accusatory, or sharp. “There were some humans who weren't Hoan G'Tay Sho. They didn't want to serve the Bird Spirits.”

“Yes,” Winnowill looked sad, for a moment. “They... did not adjust well.”

Sacrifices were never heard from again.

Winnowill's hair trailed behind her, blending with her dress. If the Glider who hummed as they swept the dust and dirt off the floors and walls with the feathers of great hawks, and with straw brooms weren't as diligent as they were, then it would have collected dirt, dust, bits of down. It must have been very difficult to care for.

Winnowill liked humans.

There was, Shen Shen thought, probably nothing like the mutilated arms and legs and face of Osek, and his misty images of Mekda and Ekuar.

It would be dark, where ever they were. Leetah spent much of her time helping villagers try to find the balance between the need to take in the sun's rays, and the need to shield one's self.

No one in Blue Mountain ever injured themselves. They did not become ill.

There would be long stretches of time in the Sun Village when no one would be hurt, or sick. Leetah would organize and reorganize the pots of herbs and oils in her cellar, rearrange her furniture, and fight with Rayek until they shook the village.

Shen Shen had always wondered if that was what it meant to have magic. Everyone thought it was so special. But really, who was Leetah, when she wasn't the healer?

Who was Winnowill?

“Winnowill,” Voll said, firmly. “Send the humans away. We must speak.”

Winnowill was still, silent.

“They will grow agitated,” she said, finally. “My Lord, can this not wait-”

“No,” Voll interrupted, then reached under his hair, pulling out a small, colourful bundle. “It cannot.”

...

Rayek wondered what everyone thought they could do. Wolfriders and Sun Villagers bustled to and fro, and spoke in hushed whispers. They put things down and picked them up, and put them down again.

Someone, possibly One Eye, brushed past him, again, and he was too close. Everyone was too close, too loud.

“Leave us,” Rayek said, coolly. “All of you. Moonshade, Dart, and Leetah are the only ones needed here.”

Wolfriders and Sun Folk alike rolled their eyes and made faces, but left. The room was dark and close, the lamp flickered in the sweet-scented breeze.

Moonshade and Dart sat close by, touching Strongbow. Leetah sat between them, quiet, and still, a presence he had known since childhood. It felt oddly safe.

He was almost overflowing. The spirits, named and unnamed, danced and floated within him, pressing almost against his very skin. His head swam with knowings, memories, powers that were not his. His stomach churned, and he hadn't eaten all day. He shook with the many dead, barely able to breathe.

He willed it away, with his old, childhood stubbornness, and took a deep breath.

He centred himself, and felt all the spirits surround him, clinging like living things. Suntop's trail to the darkness was still bright, almost aflame, and the spirits shivered in anticipation.

_Now, we will shine._

_Now, we will burn._

_Now, we will bring forth that which is hidden._

...

Leetah watched her friend enter his trance and shivered. Moonshade and Dart were seated by Strongbow, eyes on his chest, as if loathe to miss a single breath.

The spirits within Rayek had burned him. Leetah had felt that in a single touch. As if he were kindling, and they a fire, they were consuming him, altering him. Now that the many-flamed presence had left, he looked different. Worn, and drawn.

She looked between him and Strongbow.

 _Will it be worth it, old friend?_ She brushed Rayek's hair back from his forehead. _I would not lose you to gain Strongbow's life._

_I would not lose you, to death, or to this other fire._

...

Shen Shen's head began to spin.

“I'm going to be sick,” she announced, breaking the spell that had settled on their small group.

“Shen Shen,” Winnowill reached for her, concerned, but Shen Shen drew back, memories of Osek's scars and mutilations suddenly looming large in her mind.

“Don't touch me!”

Winnowill drew back, as though stung.

The pipes grew more and more insistent, crawling into Shen Shen's head, and settling there, droning on and on.

“Winnowill,” Voll drew their attention, his voice soft, as if concealing some hurt. “Why?”

“I...” Winnowill stammered, and even though Shen Shen had only known her for a few days, she felt as if she were seeing something rare. Judging by the look on the bat-elf's face, he, too, was astonished.

“It was to protect you, my lord,” Winnowill finished weakly.

“Protect me?” Voll cupped his hands protectively around the little insect. “Protect me, how? From a swarm of chatterers?”

“From- You would have gone outside!” Winnowill exclaimed. “You were beginning to forget the danger, the damages the outside caused! I protected you from that, and the preservers would have made you long for it again!”

“The outside is dangerous, Voll,” Winnowill pointed to Shen Shen. “There is the proof. It took her leg, but before that it took all her people's lives.”

“My people live!” Shen Shen snapped, willing to bear much, but not to bear that lie. “My people wander this world, as they have wandered before, but they live!”

“Yes,” Voll looked to Petalwing again, sighing. “Yes, I see now.”

He raised his head, and, looking like the elf he must have been many seasons before Savah was born, he spoke.

“Shen Shen's people may have died, or may have lived. We do not know.”

“As for us,” he gestured to the great, empty hall, to the winged elf, to the maiden so still that Shen Shen had begun to assume she was a statue. “We are all dying, Winnowill. Dying, and unable to die.”

“No,” Winnowill shook her head. “We are safe, I have ensured it. The Egg, let me show you, as he showed me, we are safe- We-”

She cut herself off, head shooting up.

“No,” she whispered.

...

They were halted on the trail.

It was wolves. Elves, and wolves, and beings just on the side of either, all grinning, sharp-teeth, and fierce, bright eyes.

“We are in the fire,” a tall, red-haired maiden twirled her spear.

“That is to say,” added a male elf so similar that they must have been related, clacking both his spears together. “We are of the fire.”

“That is to say,” another elf added, leaping as if only for the joy of it. “We are in the world.”

“We are of the world,” this was a gently voiced elder, hands free of weapons. “As you are not, let us lend you our strength.”

“Yes,” Dewshine appeared, curls floating in the air, covered with soft, downy fur. “Let us help you, star cousins!”

“Let me help my son,” Strongbow's mother appeared out of the misty crowd. She was tall, and stoic, and beautiful.

Rayek was at once irritated and profoundly touched.

“If it pleases you, help us,” he said, holding out his hands. “But quickly, we haven't much time.”

The wolves and elves joined their trail, and, with a burst of renewed speed and strength, they were gone.

...

It was summer, even in the Frozen Mountains. Summer here meant days so long that night was the mere burning of a tallow candle, or two. It meant fields of wildflowers, and reindeer, rhinoceros, even the rare, and disappearing mammoths.

There was one group of elves, small, and stocky, who had long since abandoned their species' ancient rules of reproduction, magic, and the sharing of names, in all but one way. One group, above all others, who felt the pull of the ancient home of their ancestors, and, in the long twilight of the north, they raised their heads, feeling the pull weaken, and grow nearly silent.

...

“No, you can't!” Winnowill cried, raising her hands, as if to protect herself from an unseen blow. “Stop! Be silent!”

“No!”

It was a steady, echoing cry, of many, as the hall itself began to fill with brightness.

“We will not be silent,” Voll drew Shen Shen under his arm, as the voices rose. Behind it all was the howling of wolves, and the snapping of teeth. “We will not be forgotten, we will not be left in the shadows!”

“Not by you!” Then there they were, the fiery outlines of elves, perhaps a dozen or more, as if they were made of skyfire and sunlight. “Nor by anyone else!”

...

Strongbow was weak, fading. Rayek tried to break the bars keeping him caged, to pull him free of the ropes, but they were strong, yet, even as the spirits began their assault on the Black Snake.

“Aren't you a warrior?” the red-haired maiden asked him, laughing. “Take your spear up!”

“I don't have-” but he spoke, and there it was, as if it had been there all along.

“Well done!” She laughed, and turned away.

He held up the spear. It looked as if it were made of fire, burning along the shaft, and aimed it at the bars. They burst apart.

“It can't be this easy,” he murmured, crouching in the blackness beside his friend, and untying the strange, dark bonds. The archer moaned slightly as Rayek picked him up, but was able to wrap one arm around him. The ever present spectre wolf circled them, whining anxiously.

“Go!” Galen appeared at his side, pushing him back. “You provided the path. Your friend is safe, now go!”

“But-” Rayek glanced over his shoulder.

“You provided them with the way,” Dewshine was there, suddenly. “Now, we provide the will, as long as it takes, until you're safely home.”

With that, Rayek felt the spirit-hands release him, the sweep of it like a wave, propelling him and Strongbow backwards, back along Suntop's brightly lit path, back into themselves. Behind him the battle raged on, but slowly faded out, as he felt himself, his hands, his arms, his legs.

He was alone.

He wasn't.

Leetah was there.

She was touching his forehead, her brow wrinkled in lovely concentration.

“Oh,” she sighed, shoulders slumping. “Rayek, you're alone in there, I thought. I was afraid we might lose you.”

“Rayek!”

Moonshade drew their attention. She and Strongbow were embracing, Dart tangled up between them, enough of a child still to cling to his parents.

“Look at what you've done, Rayek.”

Leetah was holding him, her voice full of pride. When was it she had last been so proud of him, he wondered?

Years ago, when they had last been hungry, he thought. On that empty plain, in the early spring. When he had credited Maleen her kill.

“Rayek!” Moonshade threw herself at him, laughing and crying. He wrapped his arms around her, surprised at how small she was, how fragile. Like an armful of moonlight and shadows, no wonder she had been named so. Her hair smelled of the flowers she tied in it, and he breathed it in deeply.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, thank you.”

Wolfriders were spilling into his hut, filling up all the corners. Old and young, all laughing, their soft, growling chuckles, and talking, barely above a whisper, as always.

Strongbow was trying to stand, while Rainsong scolded him for not being strong enough. He snarled at her, and she slapped him gently upside the head.

He met Rayek's eyes, across the room, and they exchanged the same exasperated smile.

**Thank you.**

...

The sacrifice, was she being rejected?

The parents began to step forward, but a quelling look from the shaman stopped them.

The Bird Spirits would soon arrive. Explain. They had to.

The little girl, not knowing the honour she was being given, began to weep for her mother.

...

She was dying.

Again.

Shen Shen who was Alina, who had shaped the strangleweed, altered it to feed on the light of torches, as well as unwary elves, had begun to shape a vine to reach out. To grasp, to hold. After all, no one could blame her if there was an accident.

An accident.

Anarin was shaping an archway in the Great Hall, when his legs stopped working. He fell under the stone as it moved, and as he died, he saw the satisfied smile on Winnowill's face turn to disgust when she failed to reach him in time.

An accident.

But rather than catching Winnowill in the vines, Alina fell, paralyzed, into the net, and lay there, alive, unable to move, while it ate her.

Then.

Shen Shen, who was Alina, who was Ahlais, was born in the mountain, one of the last few who were born, and was born a healer of small, minor ability. He smiled at everyone, even though his hands sometimes shook with his uselessness.

Winnowill offered to be his teacher, and guided him to the best of her ability. He meditated with her sometimes in Egg, watching the new shells form, piece by piece.

There was something off about her when she looked away from Egg, though, a wildness in her eyes.

They were out on the Aerie once. This was in the days when Voll hunted, and she was discussing the best way to persuade him away from the hawks.

“It's not safe,” she insisted.

“Maybe,” Ahlais leaned out the window and watched Voll twist through the air, laughing, while Larassaree joined him. “But maybe the point isn't safety. Maybe the point is to fly.”

No one knew that he couldn't float. He'd kept it secret since he was a child, at his mother's behest. Perhaps it was the price that healers paid.

Winnowill couldn't have known, as her small hands landed on his back, and she shoved him, laughing.

Then.

Lionhead left her body as she slept. She'd done it ever since she was a baby. She didn't know she did it, she thought she dreamed fantastical dreams, of strange places, completely unlike the azure world of her home, places where water was solid, the woods as thick and vast as the sea, places with no water at all, all sand and stone. She floated in a strange, and wonderful world.

Then she was caught. Lured in by a gentle tone, then locked in place and studied, like a child who had captured a butterfly, not knowing it needed to eat.

She had drifted, thin as algae to the Palace. Later, she met with Wavetreader, who told her that she had slept one day, then for many days, and simply never awakened.

In her rage, she had driven him away, driven herself mad. Until Galen reached out and brought her in.

She still boiled, like a typhoon, but she had begun to calm.

Then.

She was Galen, who tried a knife, she was Amreia, who shaped the cage that Winnowill kept the child, oh, the poor little child, in, she was Kerrin, who longed to go outside, asked Winnowill to open the door, she was many, many more.

**Stop!** She begged. **Please, please stop!**

Suddenly, the dream made sense.

Gliders were pouring into the room, like bees to a bear, weeping, and shrieking, as the visions, the memories, began to fade, as the light vanished.

“It wasn't-” Winnowill raised her head, lovely face made ugly with weeping. “I did it for you!”

Voll flinched.

“How,” he asked, slowly. “Could any of that have been for my sake?”

“I did it for you,” Winnowill's eyes began to dry, and she looked wild. “For all of you. And Shen Shen, the child, I did for all of you. For the stars, Voll.”

Voll gasped, and a look of sorrow overtook him.

“Winnowill,” he began.

Winnowill laughed, wildly, and pointed down the hall.

“Come and see!” She whirled, skirts swirling around her. “Come and see! It's Egg!”

Shen Shen was left behind as the Gliders flew off, Voll included, following Winnowill. She cursed them for their thoughtlessness, then followed, grateful that Winnowill couldn't fly, either. Hopefully there weren't any jumps to make.

She followed them by sound more than sight, and arrived in another huge cavern, having to push her way through the crowd to see that it was dominated by a huge, floating egg.

It looked both impressive and ridiculous.

...

The silence had ended. The elves in the mountains sighed, and went back to sleep, or work, or whatever they had been doing. The call was not silenced. It would continue, and they would answer it, one way, or another.

...

“It's here,” Winnowill showed Voll a patch of egg that, frankly, to Shen Shen's eyes, looked much like any other patch. “It's been here, all along! I found it, and Egg, we found it together!”

She looked crazed, like Rayek, or Minyah, after they'd been up too late. Shen Shen sighed, and sat down.

“Are you in pain, dear?”

Winnowill had stopped her ravings, and was holding her hands. She looked concerned.

She didn't look like the kind of person who would burn boils the size of a fist onto her son's skin.

Shen Shen smiled, and pulled her hands away.

“I'm fine.”

“We can escape this world,” Winnowill laughed. “We need to move ahead of schedule, but Egg knows. He understands! And the Doors, Brace, the Walls, we've all been working, making ready.”

“Winnowill,” Voll shook his head. “It's impossible. This isn't the stuff of the Palace, it's ordinary stone, it can't do what we need it to do.”

“It can,” Winnowill raised her hands, waving at the room. “It will! We can finally leave this world, leave this terrible world, and begin anew!”

“Winnowill, it won't work!”

“It will,” Winnowill laughed. “We'll show you, all of you, now!”

Some sort of sending, command, feeling, began emanating from Winnowill, as she stood before the egg, hands spread in demonstration. It came from her, but also from the egg, no, from a blank, cold-featured elf who sat, eyes focused on the floating statue, as if nothing else mattered.

Then the ground began to move.

Shen Shen screamed, then scolded herself for being a coward, but Voll had already heard, and he sprang, lightly as a much younger elf, to gather her to him. She clung to him, using the excuse of holding herself up to take comfort from him.

“Winnowill, what are you doing?” Voll demanded.

“We will fly!” Winnowill laughed, like any maiden, careless and free. **We will collect every magic user. Every pure blooded elf. We will take them and leave this miserable rock, at last.**

**No, Winnowill,** Voll sent, with a great, abiding sorrow, and Shen Shen felt his arms tighten around her, as he took off, heading for a hole in the ceiling.

**My people,** his voice boomed, suddenly, like a thunderstorm. **Come to the Aerie, quickly! Follow me outside!**

Suddenly, there was a flurry of noise behind them. Shen Shen looked over Voll's shoulder, and saw fully half of the Gliders following them. The others remained behind, focused on the egg thing, as if in a trance.

**Voll, where are you going?**

Winnowill's sending echoed after them, and Shen Shen hid her face in Voll's neck, next to Petalwing.

The Aerie was nearly empty, the birds shrieking as the floors shifted and altered themselves. Their nests were filled with cracking eggs, and a few tiny, screaming fledgelings that some of the Gliders picked up, gathering them to their chests.

“Tenspan!”

The bird flew in response to Voll's summons, cutting her way through the flock with both size and piercing screams.

Voll floated to her, with Shen Shen still in his arms.

**Cling tight to me, beloved. We must be swift,** with that, she was nearly thrown from him, as Tenspan's wingstrokes tore through the air, away from the mountain, to float above a sea of green.

The Gliders followed, some on birds, even more than the Eight that Aroree said were honoured to hunt for the mountain, the rest a cloud of people, swarming in the air.

“The humans!” Shen Shen looked at the ground. The humans were pouring out of the cave, terrified, like a line of ants. “Voll, the humans can't fly!”

**Catch the humans up, any of you on birds,” Voll did this for her, she knew. He didn't truly care what happened to the strange creatures that lived outside the mountain. **Carry them off to the forest, as far as you can get. Everyone, away from the mountain!**

The birds dove at the people below, and Shen Shen looked over Voll's shoulder at the mountain. It was writhing, like a living thing, nothing like the mindless shaking of her home, before it collapsed on her.

**We'll show you!** It was Winnowill again. **We'll fly, and then we'll come back for you!**

**You'll die, Winnowill!** Voll sounded desperate, despairing. **You'll all die. Let it go. We'll search for the Palace, all of us, together.**

The Palace?

Winnowill laughed. **A dead piece of a dead world! Our new world is living, we made it live. We'll show you, we will!**

The mountain leapt from the earth. One moment, it was of a piece with the ground, the next it floated, a huge egg, with a smooth, sleek smooth shell

Shen Shen screamed.

The egg rose. It flew, high, too high, it flew until it was a tiny speck, in a dark sky, then it disappeared with the night.

**We'll come back for you,** Winnowill sent. **We'll come back and show-**

Her sending disappeared into a scream. Shen Shen looked up.

For a moment, a single, new star burned in the sky. Then it was gone. Along with Winnowill.

...

The night had finally come to the mountains. A watcher stretched her legs out, marching along the edge of the fence. The muted call of the palace surged.

There was a new element to the call. It awoke sleepers, surprised babies into crying. It felt fearfully joyous, blissfully sorrowful, speaking of things that the small elves had no words for.

One voice was missing. No one noticed it.

...

Rayah was lighting the lanterns, one at a time, between giggles, as Wing strung first one, then another, on moth-cloth ribbons between pillars garlanded in flowers. Musicians played old and young tunes, one even following Pike on a Wolfrider's ballad from long ago.

Strongbow was being supported by Moonshade, and what he claimed were far too many pillows that were all going to get dirty. Rayek surprised himself by staying close to both of them, on the other side of Strongbow, trying to avoid the Wolfriders.

He was used to effusive gratitude, but the Sun Folk knew that words and admiring glances were enough to feed him(although, admittedly, he'd had much, much fewer of those since the quake). Wolfriders, on the other hand, expressed their happiness with hugs, rough, affectionate blows to the back and side, and nuzzling him, if they kept their hands on him long enough. He tried to avoid it by redirecting them to Strongbow, who had no compunctions about snapping and growling when overwhelmed.

Some of the Wolfriders were joining Leetah, Maleen, and Vurdah in a dance. The young Newstar and Tyleet, joined by Tyleet's mother, Nightfall, who seemed embarrassed by the whole ordeal. Rayek had heard her telling Tyleet that dancing ought to be done at home, in private.

He lay back, left in peace for once, as the Wolfriders clapped for the new dancers.

The sky was full of falling stars.

 


	4. The valley of the shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gliders take flight.

...

The humans were gathered together in the valley, shaken and shocked. Shen Shen looked over mothers and children, fathers, single men and women, with the help of the shaman. She wondered if this was what Leetah had seen, in the aftermath of the groundshake.

There was nothing she could do for one elderly woman, who breathed her last in her man's arms. Shen Shen looked him over.

“He will follow her,” the shaman said, softly, when Shen Shen rejoined her. “I see it. But where will their spirits go, now that the Blue Mountain is no more?”

Shen Shen didn't answer, but began to prepare willow bark for tea.

“You're not like the others,” the woman continued. “Are they- What kind of beings are you?”

Shen Shen paused and looked at the woman, then around the little group of survivors. Fully half of all Gliders had been in the mountain when it burned, according to Voll. Nearly half of the little human village hadn't made it off the hills before they'd fallen in on themselves.

Where the mountain had been, there was now a crater, rough and forbidding, shrouded in darkness.

“Are they evil spirits?” The woman whispered. “Have we worshiped evil spirits all this time?”

Shen Shen sighed, and began to drop both hot rocks and bark into a pot of water.

“They aren't spirits,” she said, softly. “Neither am I.”

The shaman stared at her, eyes wide and wild.

“Then what are you?” She asked, voice rising hysterically. She gestured, to the crater, to the people. “What kind of creatures can do such things? Can destroy a mountain, a people?”

Shen Shen flinched, but the woman hadn't finished.

“Do you not have eyes, to see what you do? Ears, to hear?” She began to laugh, madly, then to cry. “Do you not have hearts, to destroy on a whim? To destroy that which has stood forever?”

“We do,” Shen Shen said, serving out tea. A woman took it for her child, whose leg was gone below the knee. Shen Shen pulled her skirt up to show the child her own leg, the one Amrok had carved. The child sat up, eyes shining, and his mother smiled, sadly.

“We don't have a name,” Shen Shen sat back down beside the weeping shaman. “We call ourselves “elves”.”

She tried to think of a way to explain it, and was interrupted by Voll.

“We came to your world many years ago,” he sat down beside them. “From a far away star that had died. We never intended to stay, but there was an accident.”

“I suppose we frighten your people,” Shen Shen shrugged. “They attacked us, from the first moment they saw us, so we knew to flee them. Until a few years ago, I had only known humans as legends, to be feared.”

“We feared your people so much,” Voll stared uncomfortably at the ground. “That when we realized you saw us as spirits, we decided to... encourage it.”

“Encourage it.” The shaman coughed, a bitter laugh. “All those many years. The people we sent inside. The “gifts”.”

As if, Shen Shen thought, suddenly angry, a metal spear head, or a necklace, could replace a beloved child, or mother. As if the “honour” of serving someone like Winnowill was anything compared to a human's last few years spent among their adored family.

Ah, but the Hoan G'Tay Sho had known that, too. What was it the Olbar had said? “That type of honour you prefer to give to your enemies, rather than your friends.”

“No one forced you to send your own people,” Shen Shen said tartly. “Or the children of your neighbours, into the mountain. I'm sorry for my people tricking you. It was wrong, and no apology could be enough. But you played your own part in this.”

“Oh?” The shaman laughed again. “Is that what they told you? Did they also tell you they asked for us? For our elderly, our children, our young? The white-faced mother who showed herself was always so pleased to greet them, after all, as she was since the beginning.”

“And we gave them when asked. We gave of ourselves, and when we could no longer bear it, we went to war and gave of our enemies. We gave gladly, knowing that our gifts were cherished, and the skies would be clear of storms, and the thunder would strike far from our homes, and that the snow would be light, and the game plenty, and the fields and forest lush.”

She became hysterical. “The snow came, and the thunder shook the mountains, and the fields were bare from drought, and ice! And we gave, and the game was plentiful one year, then scarce the next. The woods were lush, then empty. So we gave again, and again, our food, pearls, copper, amber, agate, shells, our very selves, and all for nothing!”

“All the losses, all the enemies we made,” the shaman shook her head. “And now.”

The other humans were still in shock, and grief. Only this woman, halfway through her life, as Shen Shen judged it, was awake enough to understand the enormity of the change in their world.

She looked over her shoulder, at Voll. He was turned away, as though shamed by this, the very evidence of his people's great falsehood, and the damages they had caused to their neighbours.

She pulled off the golden diadem they had made her, took off her amber bracelet, and even her earrings, and the golden rings she wrapped around her pigtails. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Voll take off his own jewelry, including the silver crown. Soon more Gliders were piling up earrings, necklaces, bracelets. Even spears and knives, of that strange, hard metal.

“It's not enough,” Shen Shen said, pushing the pile toward the still weeping shaman. “But it's a start. You can use it to trade, or buy a place for yourselves. Somewhere.”

She pointed to the east.

“The Deathwater Clan lives that way. You can go there, tell Olbar the Mountain-Tall that I tried to keep my promise, but I failed.”

She walked away, unable to bear it any longer.

The Chosen Eight returned at dawn, with huge beasts, deer, tree-eaters, and some long nosed creature she couldn't identify. Humans and Gliders alike began butchering the animals, roasting some now, over open flames, and beginning the process of drying the rest. It would take all day, and perhaps into the evening.

<O>

Strongbow and Moonshade insisted on sharing his bed when time came that even Ruffel and Maleen were tiring of dancing and music, and wanted to slip away. Rayek had expected to feel crowded, or stifled, but it was only a little over warm.

Strongbow was between him and Moonshade, holding his hand tightly, even in sleep, and holding Moonshade by the waist. Rayek sighed, and pulled off some blankets.

He slept, and while he'd been sleeping, Dart had come in on the other side of them, curled up next to his mother. The sun was coming in through the window, making it at least afternoon, but he found he didn't really want to do anything but lie there, and watch it sparkle through the blinds.

**Go back to sleep, it's broad daylight,** Strongbow sent, pulling him closer.

<O>

Living elfin magic was best to replenish the energy of the stone, but the energy of the dead was a near second. Eight years ago, the victims of a quake had breathed a new, half-life into the stone, and now, those who had dared to fly too high, too far, filled it again.

Those who guarded the living stone, against the day its masters might return, shook with fear and ran to warn their king below the ground.

<O>

The humans left the next morning, with all the things the Gliders had given them. Some looked over their shoulders at the elves, accusingly, sorrowfully, or with empty faces and eyes.

“I want to go home,” Shen Shen said, before Voll could speak to her. “I want to see my daughter.”

“Home,” he repeated, as though distracted. “Of course.”

“The Red Mountains,” Shen Shen said, firmly. “We can all go. B'rak and Nilma will find a place for all of us.”

A member of the Chosen Eight, Yeyeen, she thought her name was, flew in, followed by Petalwing and the entire flock of preservers. Shen Shen turned away, watching the humans make their way through the woods, disappearing into the dark forest.

She walked along the edge of a small stream, dress dragging and catching on twigs and grasses, until she was out of sight and sound of Voll and his people.

Two small elves and a baby were different from eights of eights of elves and flock of giant birds.

Two small elves and a baby were very different from eights of eights of elves who had caused a war, and destroyed a village, even unwittingly.

But how unwittingly?

She tried to dismiss the thought, but it lingered, as Voll spoke to his Chosen, and to the refugees, who were huddled together, and as she came to his gesture, to climb back aboard Tenspan, it made a small home in the back of her mind.

<O>

Word spread nearly as fast among humans as sending. The Blue Mountain, the tall, lonely peak to the west, had, in a single day, turned to an egg, then vanished. The spirits within the mountain had been evil, no good, no half evil, half good. The good had vanished with the mountain, no, the evil. The Hoan G'Tay Sho were all dead, no, they had survived, and were assembling their spears, no, they were refugees, in need of aid.

Nilma brought the news to Osek and Naksima, while Ahleki and Shenkir neglected their chores in favour of playing in the treetops.

“Shen Shen is alright,” Naksima said, firmly, stirring a pot of moose stew.

“We would know if she were hurt, or dead,” Osek added, calmly.

Nilma sighed. Hope was all well and good, but the most likely outcome was that an earthquake, not spirits, had flattened the mountain, and that no one had survived.

“What should we tell Ahleki?”

“Nothing,” Naksima said, firmly.

“She'll hear from Shen Shen when she returns,” Osek added, shaking his head. “As we all will, over and over again.”

Naksima laughed, and pushed a lock of hair back behind her ear.

Outside, Ahleki took off from the roof, ignoring Shenkir's calls.

...

Shenkir was used to looking for Ahleki. She was swift and fierce as the little bird that she somewhat resembled, and tended to seek high places when unhappy.

He found her on a pillar of rock that had probably been part of the mountain next to it once, long ago, before a glacial melt had worn between the two. She was barely standing on it, wafting in the wind, hair waving wildly out from her golden hairband.

“I'm a bad daughter,” she said, as he sat down, pulling on her ankle.

Shenkir shook his head, and pulled her to kneel beside him, cuddling her against his side.

“It's hard to be good all the time,” he said, softly. Ahleki seemed to find it harder than most, but then Auntie Shen Shen wasn't too predictable, so it was hard to say when she would scold, or laugh.

The little girl shook her head.

“I get mad too much,” she said, softly.

Shenkir shrugged.

“Auntie Shen Shen is annoying, though, always buzzing like a flea. Do this, Ahleki, don't do this, Ahleki!” Shenkir teased her. She didn't respond by giggling and tagging him, as she usually did, but shrugged and sighed.

The winds blew from the west, from a sky full of fire.

Shenkir pointed to the sun.

“We should go home.”

Ahleki stood again, and held out both hands.

“Want a ride down?” she asked, eyes gleaming mischievously, looking a bit like a mask of her old self.

He grinned. The sky darkened as they floated down, then ran home. He was still tingling with the remnants of Ahleki's magical grasp when they returned home, welcomed by his mother, who scolded them lightly for running off without permission.

“Ahleki, what's this in your hair?” Aunt Nilma asked, running a hand over said blue-black locks.

It came away covered in grey-blue dust.

Actually it was everywhere. All over both children, and then, when they all went outside, it coated the houses, and the trees. The water they drew from the river was clouded, and had to be forced through a cedar mesh to be cleaned.

“Blue Mountain,” B'Rak murmured, eyes round and slightly wild.

Ahleki burst into tears.

...

Strongbow was still weak, had to be fed well chewed meat by his lifemate, and was very, very tired of sitting around, a fact he made known loudly and often.

“You will regain your strength, but only with time and care,” Leetah insisted. “Trying to do too much will only make things worse.”

**I hate this,** he grumbled, after she left.

Moonshade nodded, smiling, as she cut a jagged edge in Nightfall's new tunic. Dart and Shushen were out on the lake together, so she, Rayek, and Strongbow were alone in Rayek's hut.

Rayek himself was stretched out beside Strongbow, still exhausted.

“I don't know why I'm so tired,” he sighed. “I didn't do anything, really.”

“It looked like you did a lot, to me,” Moonshade said, softly. Her eyes went big and sad again, and Rayek regretted his complaints.

**Looked like you did a lot from my view, too,** Strongbow sent, and curled back against him. **I hate sleeping at night.**

Rayek rolled his eyes, and kept silent. In moments, Strongbow was asleep again.

**You should see him when he's really sick,** Moonshade sent, softly. **He's even worse.**

**I'm never going to see him like that,** Rayek retorted. **Because the moment he so much as sneezes, I'm taking him to Leetah, so she can deal with him.**

Moonshade laughed again, and stood up, tucking the finished tunic under her arms.

**I'm going to take this to Nightfall.**

Rayek watched her as she left, as her dark hair and purple tunic blended with the night. Then he looked at Strongbow, who looked younger in his sleep, shorn hair curling slightly around his face and his ears.

Rayek rolled back over, and fell asleep to the sound of Strongbow breathing, cursing himself for a fool.

It's only because she's pretty, he thought, as he fell asleep. She's pretty and kind. You don't even know her.

...

Shen Shen thought of Ahleki, as she had been as a baby, as a volatile, hysterical toddler.

She felt as if the last few days were a dream. She had been asleep ever since she entered the mountain and now she was awake again. She lay back on Tenspan's back, considering how to break the news to Ahleki that there would be another new baby.

When Ahleki had been three, a woman had asked Shen Shen to hold her baby while she washed her hands. Ahleki had given the child a look somewhere between loathing and horrorstricken. Upon requests for explanations, she had told Shen Shen that it was a well known fact that babies bit elves, and Ahleki was concerned. It was such a blatant lie that Shen Shen and Naksima had only laughed.

Leetah had been grown and moved to her own hut when she had been born. In fact, it was more common than not that elves had only one child, despite the fecundity of the first villagers.

But Ahleki was older now, Shen Shen thought. She was still fierce, and rude, but she would understand. And there were two whole years to wait.

Two years, and then a lifetime. Ahleki would be grown in eight and two more years, at least enough to live on her own, for the most part, to have a lovemate. But by then, the baby would be only eight, and then another ten years before it was grown.

Shen Shen would have thought, once, that that was nothing. Most children in the village seemed to grow up in the blink of an eye.

But in the eight years since losing the village, time seemed to pass more slowly. Every year seemed longer than the next. Ahleki never did as she was told, had terrible manners, and nothing, not punishment, not love, not ignoring, nothing changed it. Then, she was also delightful, and cheerful, and unexpectedly kind and generous.

Shen Shen blamed herself for the former, and had no idea where the latter came from. After eight years, she still knew nothing. The old women in the village told her it was normal, and that no mother knew anything.

She rolled over.

Preserver silk on all sides. She was like an egg in a nest. They had made a tent on Tenspan's back. For her comfort, she supposed. Nothing too good for their prize breeding zwoot-mare. Larassaree was in a similar situation on Reevol's bird.

There had been baby-not in the clearing behind them, she considered.

Better not to have taken it. Human women sometimes grew so ill of it they never got better, who knew what it would do to an elf?

And they were so few as it was.

But why did she have to be the one to bring one more elf into the world?

...

The consciousness had been used to leaving the body, although the fashion in which it had left this time had been somewhat inelegant. The consciousness had flown free so often that at this point, freedom was a simple thing to grasp.

It felt the pull to its home, to others like it. Born on this world, yet not of it.

But unlike those, it was not bound to ancient pieces of a homeworld long gone. Nor to a new homeworld settled in desperation.

Hatred, both of the self and of the other, cold and vicious, allowed it respite. It would not be bound. It would not be stopped.

The consciousness began to move.

...

The little elves on the mountain were used to sleeping lightly, waking quickly, and to sudden calls to arms. They slept with weapons, in armour, and with one eye on the hills.

They weren't quite prepared for the floor to open.

...

Shen Shen didn't rest so much as pout. At least, that's what she called it, because she was uncharitable to herself.

Recognition was Recognition. An enduring, elfin truth.

Recognition didn't mean lifemating, she thought. There were lots of Recognized pairs in the village that never lifemated, that met and parted freely.

But would Voll allow that?

She sat up, and looked at his back. Without the dreamlike haze of the past few days, she was suddenly aware of the lines at the edge of his eyes, of the firm, uncompromising set of his mouth, of the straight line of his back.

What kind of father would he be?

She watched him a moment longer, then lay back.

Voll wanted a baby, that was certain. Yet, there hadn't been a child in Blue Mountain for how many years?

Did he know how to care for a child?

Shen Shen had thought she did. Then Nilma had had to tell her to ween Ahleki. The old women in the village had had to tell her when Ahleki was old enough to help with chores, to clean her own little things. Ahleki had been a full year behind all the other children her age in putting on her own little shoes.

Shen Shen wished she had stayed home. Wished she was out in the woods with Naksima, trying not to laugh while they looked for Ahleki and Shenkir. Wished she were in her hut, trying to cook, while Ahleki, in her eagerness to help, ruined dinner.

Ahleki was still small enough to fit easily into her and Osek's lap. Shen Shen couldn't believe there would be a time when she wasn't, a time when Ahleki would be coltish and awkward, or a time when she would lose her awkwardness in favour of pure grace and loveliness. Shen Shen was sure she would be lovely. Marek had been beautiful, and Ahkren had been handsome. Ahleki was the most beautiful child Shen Shen had ever known.

But she shuddered at the thought of doing it again, this time with strangers. Not even just her own child, her and Osek's. There was no doubt that the child of the Lord of all the Gliders would be seen as very special, indeed. She would never be alone with it, would have to share in the raising of it, share in whatever strange customs the “Bird Spirits” had for raising children.

Voll would be there, always. He would be a kind, patient presence, too old to ever truly understand, filled with wisdom and knowledge beyond all her knowing.

She enjoyed catching babies as they fell into the world, prided herself on making the most nervous and miserable mother serene and happy, but she had never desired it for herself. She felt intruded upon, as if someone had moved into her house without asking her.

**I know I'll be happy when you're here,** she locksent to the slowly forming thing within her. **But you might have chosen a better time to come.**

...

The consciousness reached out. It was alone. Its people were gone. Why?

Oh, yes. The mountain.

It had failed. How had it failed? Everything had been set in stone, prepared, sent for.

Ah, yes. The wolf-blooded ones. The savage. He was to blame. He had distracted her, purposefully, come in order to destroy them, destroy her, destroy Voll.

He had escaped. But she would find him.

She began to move.

<O>

When he awoke, Strongbow was still sleeping, and Moonshade was still gone. Rayek got up, noting that the sun was low in the sky, and went to look for her.

She wasn't with Ahnshen, and she wasn't in the baking hut. She wasn't with Leetah, who was just getting up, and going to the bathhouse with Cutter and the twins.

He went to the lake, and found Shushen and Dart arguing companionably over their water-leaf, and she was no where to be seen. Not in the woods near the village, nor in the long grass.

There was a tall, tapering stone pillar to the west of the village. The Wolfriders avoided it, all of them, even Rainsong and Woodlock and their children. Sun Folk climbed it occasionally, but otherwise it was left alone, a tall, somewhat ominous shadow.

Moonshade made a black silhouette against the setting sun, cradling something in her hands. Rayek made sure to make noise as he approached, snapping a twig in his hands.

There were tears in Moonshade's eyes as she looked up, and she sniffled wetly.

The pillar was a red, soft stone, an oddity in the area, where most of the rocks that poked through the grasses were grey and hard. It was criss-crossed with dark lines, soot mixed with grease, broken by strange, round blotches.

He took the object Moonshade was holding for a stone at first. It was moderately large, round, dark. It wasn't until her hands shifted that he saw the unmistakable eye-sockets, and the small, tapering chin.

“It's her,” she whispered, brokenly. “I thought it would have been destroyed. After the fire.”

Rayek stared down at it, and a vision of purple eyes and auburn hair swam before his eyes.

“Oh, Crescent,” Moonshade began weeping, openly.

Rayek tried to reconcile the little, burnt thing, and the sweet, small maiden, willow thin with youth, who had so fearlessly confronted him in the spirit place. He looked at Moonshade, and wondered if she would believe him.

He reached out, feeling clumsy as a child, and sent his memories to Moonshade, the meeting in the woods, Crescent with the bow, and a coltish, youthful overconfidence.

**It's her!** Moonshade overwhelmed him, in a flood of love and sorrow and pride.

Crescent had been a tiny child, as small as Dart. Her hair hung in her eyes, and she claimed she liked it that way. She had been stubborn and fierce and bold, a fact that had surprised her shy and quiet parents.

**Oh, Rayek,** Moonshade embraced him. **I don't think you know how much good you do when you listen to your heart.**

He flushed and pulled away.

“We'd better get back. It's starting to get dark.”

“Strange,” Moonshade tucked the skull into the crook of her arm, and put her hand on his elbow. “I didn't think we'd been gone so long.”

Rayek smiled, and looked to the sky.

“I was so frightened when Strongbow was lying there,” Moonshade confessed. “I was an elder already when he was born, you know. I never thought to live to see him die.”

The sky was fire bright in the west, spreading orange light over the plains, and Rayek tried not to notice that Moonshade's hand was warm, and very gracefully made, or how she smiled, lowering her eyes as if her happiness embarrassed her.

Fortunately, the light was beginning to fade.

<O>

Shen Shen woke up, surprised to find she had been sleeping. She felt no better, still tired, worn, sad.

She sat crosslegged, still in a nest of preserver's webs, and looked around. There were hills, foothills, and she smiled. Soon they would be in the Red Mountains, in the great cedar forest that Naksima claimed extended from the sea to the end of the world, provided you never needed a world outside the Red Mountains. An old, foolish joke.

The sun set to her left, burning low and bright over the hills, so she raised her hand to shield her eyes without thinking, before she realized what was wrong.

The northern sky gleamed ahead of them. Small stars were beginning to shine in the east, and when she turned her head, she saw nothing that looked like home, none of the rivers she knew, no grand cedar trees, tapping at the roof of the sky, no red stones shining in the last gleam of light. Only thick pine woods, grey slices of stone that jutted fiercely into the sky, and, in the distance, snow covered peaks.

She stood, trying to see more, and fell, her wooden leg unable to gain purchase in the slick surface, and yelped in pain when she twisted her knee.

“Shen Shen?”

She raised her head, glaring at Voll.

“I asked you to take me home!” She shouted, over the wind, which roared against them. Her dress was suddenly inadequate and she shivered in the cold.

“We are going home,” Voll said. He motioned ahead. “To the greatest home you could imagine, Shen Shen. The first home.”

Shen Shen stared at him.

“I told my daughter I would be back before this second full moon, Voll. I told you that!”

“We'll return before then,” He smiled, as if trying to reassure her. “After all, we go to the Palace of the High Ones. Once there, we can go anywhere we like.”

Winnowill wasn't the only mad one in Blue Mountain. Shen Shen tried to remember everything Osek had said of it.

That it was lovely, but old, beginning to crumble, that it sang a song of home and welcome, and love. That it had been impossible to open the door, but rockshaping magic had allowed them entry and they had explored until.

The trolls. Shen Shen shuddered, remembering Osek's sending tales, the huge, terrifying creatures, with their sharp knives and foul breath.

“Those mountains are dangerous,” She told Voll, trying again to stand, only to fall. “There are trolls there, horrible people who live under the ground. My friend Osek was held captive by them since he was a child, in the time of the High Ones.”

She wanted to get closer, but the only way for her was to crawl, which she refused to do. Beneath her, she felt the beat of Tenspan's wings as she plowed through the air, and all around her, elves and birds were filling the sky.

“I trust that we'll fare a bit better than one rock shaper child, Shen Shen,” Voll scoffed, and there was something wild, and youthful, and dangerous about him.

“I have a child, Voll,” she tried to reason with him. “My life isn't my own to risk, and it doesn't belong to you, either. Take me home, now.”

“I know now why Winnowill fell so badly,” he spoke softly, as if to himself. As if Shen Shen weren't even there. “I made the lies. She fell into the dark, the shadows of my lies. Now I must take my people to their true home, to the light.”

Shen Shen put her knife on first out of habit, even before she dressed, held in case something, anything, attacked. She had only used it for defense once, when an eagle had gone for Ahleki. She could still remember the way the knife had gone in, once, then twice. The blood had spilled over her, sprayed her and Ahleki. No clean kill, the bird had gasped her last breaths out with a slightly surprised, accusing look in her eyes. Shen Shen and Ahleki had both wept for hours, in relief, and out of grief, while Nilma carefully cleaned the bird, saving the feathers for sacred fans, the bones for flutes, and the claws and head for the Eagle-Woman, the being that the Red Mountain People claimed lived in the mountains, both invisible and not.

It was with her still, under the dress, which was beginning to look like it had been through a mountain dying, and two days of rough living. She touched the hilt to reassure herself, and couldn't help but think of the eagle, yellow eyes fading with death.

<o>

Rayek left Moonshade with Strongbow, and went down to the lake. It was empty, still. The moons were dark, and the stars weren't strong enough to sparkle in the waters.

The sky looked a bit darker. Actually, the stars were a bit dimmer than they should have been, the air was a bit colder.

Rayek seldom thought about the humans that had lived in the fields before them. They weren't even ghosts, just an oddity occasionally unearthed in the form of burned and cracked stone tools, and in the way the Wolfriders would avoid certain spots in the fields, as if there was a foul scent in the air. They were even less of a presence than the ancient enemies of Sorrow's End, despite the horror stories that Wolfriders told in hushed tones, or their more triumphant lays that they told at festivals.

Crescent's skull hardly made them more real. He simply felt sorry for Moonshade and Strongbow, who had curled over it as if it were a living child, and Dart, who stared at it with uneasy, wistful eyes. The humans who had done it seemed as distant as a storm, which threw down trees, and left without any other evidence it had ever been.

“I killed one of them,” Cutter had told him, softly, when they had been forced into close confinement at the behest of an irritated bear. “The night of the fire. I didn't want to, but he was going to kill Redlance.”

His voice had been soft, as if imparting a shameful secret, which had confused Rayek. Of course they had killed a human. In fact, based on Strongbow and Moonshade's stories, he was surprised they hadn't killed more. He would have. He would have killed them all.

He would have rained everything he could have down on the human village, and perhaps that was why everything was the way it was. Perhaps that was why Cutter and Leetah had twins, blue eyed, with bright, fiery hair, perhaps that was why Leetah laughed more, and smiled peacefully in repose, rather than facing the world with a practiced serenity.

Perhaps that was why, as his love for her changed, this new, strange feeling for Moonshade surfaced within him, even as he tried to force it away, mindful of Strongbow. Perhaps he was simply not good enough for love, not good enough to love properly. For all his powers and prowess, he never had been. Too proud, too angry, too arrogant, a loner by choice and by necessity. Love and friendship had always been strange words, a language beyond his understanding.

“Boo!”

He jumped, as Rayah tumbled over his shoulder to land in his lap.

“Did I scare you?” She asked.

“No,” he advised her, twisting one of her long, black locks in his fingers.

Rayah pouted momentarily, then brightened.

“Did I startle you?” She asked.

“A bit,” he said, agreeably.

She was tall for her age. Already taller than Suntop and Ember, of a height with Wing. He couldn't recall being so tall, but assumed that he wouldn't have been, based on the lack of food in his childhood. He wondered if this trend would continue for her, if she would be statuesque into adulthood, or if it was only a momentary thing, ceasing in some months or years. She was too tall for her little trousers, already, and fast growing out of her jacket.

“I'm sorry I haven't had time for our lessons,” he set her on the ground beside him. “Have you been practicing?”

She shrugged.

“I light the fire for mother at mealtimes,” she said. “She told me I'm not to do too much without you, or Savah.”

For a moment he was overtaken by a blind rage. They would cripple her, stifle her powers at this young age. Jealous, blind, dirt-digging fools. They could tell this would be another child to outshine them, and they couldn't bear it.

Then reason took over. Neither Ingen, nor Jarrah, had magic. Furthermore, firemaking was different than shaping, or healing. Fire, the great destroyer and creator, had to be carefully guarded.

“Can you light this reed?”

He held it over the water, ready to drop it if she got over-excited, or went too far. The moons passed overhead as she lit reed after read, then sticks, until she got too excited and his robe went up in flames.

“Rayek!” Rayah barreled into him, shoving him backwards into the water.

They both went under, in slimy mud, tangling themselves in lilies and weeds. When they surfaced, Rayah attempted to look contrite, but failed, as giggles overcame her. Rayek tried to maintain a stern expression, but failed in the face of Rayah's laughter.

They splashed in the water for a few minutes, but the nights were beginning to leave summer's endless heat behind, and Rayah was soon shivering in the cool breeze and the chill waters.

Jarrah chased them out as soon as they returned to their parents' house.

“Your father just cleaned the floor this morning,” she scolded them, handing them towels and clean clothes. “Go and bathe, both of you. Rayek, you should have taken her to the baths immediately.”

The village glowed with lamps and fires, from windows and in the small lanes. The bathhouse glowed with small lanterns and the fires that heated each pool. It was the largest building in the village, with huge doors, hooks to hang robes and dresses on, and piles of soap, oils, and cloths.

Never empty, there were families there tonight, relaxing before bed. Rainsong's little pack was in a temperate pool, while Vurdah, Kiro and little Sena sat under heated fountains that poured into the larger baths. Rayah immediately abandoned Rayek for Wing and the two of them drew Sena into their little games, laughing and playing. Newstar was at an age when one became aware of dignity, and sat with her parents, combing oils into her long yellow hair.

“Ah, when will this little one be born?” Rainsong complained. “I can barely walk now and if I grow any bigger, I'll burst.”

Rayek made a non-committal sound, and Woodlock laughed, patting his shoulder companionably.

“Smart lad,” he praised. “Best to stay silent.”

He would have done better to have heeded his own advice, Rayek thought, watching Rainsong draw herself nearly out of the water with annoyance.

“Why don't you carry the next one?” She suggested, snippishly. “You can be ill at every meal, and watch your belly and legs balloon up, moon after moon. Ugh! And that dress!”

She motioned to a pile of rainbow tinted silk, abandoned on the floor.

“It itches and tickles every inch. Ahnshen says he makes one for all mothers! Pah!”

She dropped back in the bath with a splash and an expression of disgust.

“I could ask Moonshade to make something for you,” Rayek offered, surprised at himself.

Rainsong blushed, and looked immediately contrite.

“No, no,” she stammered. “After everything you've all been through, we couldn't ask her to.”

Rayek hesitated. Moonshade never complained of anything, but she hadn't had any handiwork lately, and her hands twitched sometimes, as if seeking work.

“I don't think she'll mind,” he found himself saying, as if it were someone else speaking. Surely, it couldn't be him, this obliging person.

“It can't hurt to ask,” Woodlock said, taking his lifemate's feet into his lap and massaging them. When Rainsong closed her eyes, moaning in relief, he met Rayek's eyes and mouthed a thank you.

Rayek rinsed his hair out and began drying off, putting on a new loincloth and robe. Rayah was still playing, although a small squabble some time ago had induced Kiro and Vurdah to remove their child, advising everyone that Sena needed to go to bed. Rayek wondered how true it was when they cast nervous glances at Woodlock and Rainsong, who smiled blandly back, and, when he finally managed to disentangle Rayah from her complicated game of pretend, she sleepily confirmed that the quarrel had been slightly more serious than anyone had let on.

“Sena said that Ashahn said that Wolfriders are all savages. He said they would eat us if they ever got hungry enough.”

Rayek rolled his eyes. Certainly the Wolfriders were primitive, but cannibals? The idea was absurd.

“Sena shouldn't listen to Ashahn,” he told her.

“That's what Vurdah said,” Rayah yawned as she spoke, and held up her hands to be picked up, only continuing when she was in his arms. “Kiro said Ashahn's just jealous because Treestump's a better smith after eight years than he'll ever be. Vurdah said Ashahn's just as good a smith as Treestump, but Ashahn's afraid of things he doesn't know.”

If Ashahn didn't know Wolfriders after eight years of the two tribes visiting and moving in with each other, it was unlikely that he ever would, Rayek thought. Ashahn, and a few others, didn't want to know Wolfriders.

Well, it wasn't likely that they would ever need to, he decided, as he put Rayah to bed, and awkwardly accepted another robe, and a basket of food from his mother, who seemed convinced that he was starving and freezing to death in the late summer bounty.

Anyone who didn't want to know Wolfriders could avoid them. He paused on entering his hut, seeing Strongbow and Moonshade in deep conversation, Moonshade's eyes shining like the stars in reflected lamplight, and Strongbow's long fingers wrapped tightly around hers. They paused when he entered, and smiled, gesturing for him to sit down.

“Maleen sent supper for you,” Moonshade told him, pointing to a covered pot on the stove. “I asked her to teach me how to do that, the burning food thing, but she said Ruffel would be a better teacher.”

“A better teacher for cooking,” Rayek said, opening up the pot, and inhaling the savoury steam of spiced meat, stewed goodroot, and dumplings. “But if you want to burn food, Maleen's the one to ask.”

**It's all burning to us,** Strongbow sent, chewing on his own supper.

Rayek smiled.

The plains were vast and the woods were deep. Any Sun Villager who didn't like Wolfriders, and any Wolfrider who disliked Sun Folk, could easily avoid each other. The rest of them would just muddle through this strange new world together.

...

Shen Shen tried to escape the first night, and was brought back by Kureel, literally kicking and biting. The next night, Ahralree met her just as she was sneaking away, and the two of them had silently, in mutual embarrassment, agreed not to speak of it.

This time she was taking chances, carefully tying strips of preserver's silk, torn from various swiftly woven sheets and blankets, now that the mountains had begun to grow, sharp peaks that bit at the sky, so that Tenspan's belly occasionally brushed the trees.

Voll never looked back, only toward the mountains. Only to the trolls, and the cold, the glaciers that never shrank, only grew, overtaking elves and humans, swallowing them up.

She looped the rope around the tree, and jumped, swinging as lightly as if she had flown, down, into the needles of the tree, until she managed to slide from branch to branch, to the ground. It was littered with needles and gray stones, covered in brush, clearly unmanaged.

Don't let there be trolls, she prayed. High ones, let me escape, let me go back to Ahleki. I'll never complain again. Let me see Osek, and Naksima, and Nilma.

**Shen Shen.**

More than sending, it was a calling. It awoke something in her, drew her back, made her stumble as she tried to push onward.

**Leave me alone!**

She wondered if there were humans in the woods, if they had canoes, if she dared to ask for help. She wondered if she could get hold of a log, ride it down the stream that whispered in the distance.

**Shen Shen, where are you going?**

Her first instinct was to shoot back, “anywhere you aren't”, but she stifled it and kept walking, nearly running. She could hear branches breaking behind her, knew her trail was clear, but kept running. Gliders were used to flight. If she could just find a hiding place, a thicket or a cave, she'd be fine.

**Shen Shen. You must return.**

He was circling overhead, she knew, suddenly. The bond wasn't yet broken, and he was using it to call her back.

**Let. Me. GO!**

She put everything she had into breaking the bond, and nearly succeeded. But she had stopped, stilled for just a moment, between trees, and that was just long enough for the strange bat elf, whose name she didn't know, to pick her up in his talons.

“No!” She drew her knife, stabbing at him. “No, let me go!”

“You little-” He drew a breath, and a cold, superior look passed over his face.

“You cannot survive alone here,” he said, reasonably, patronizingly. “You must return now. Lord Voll is very worried.”

“To the Burning Waste with Voll, and all of you!” With that, she reached up, prying off his talons.

She fell, again, but she hadn't made any careful calculations this time, and she hit the ground, hard, stunning herself.

She had nothing left to fight when they gathered her up, and this time she allowed herself to be returned to the ingenious little carrying cage on Tenspan's back, this time bound in preserver's silks. They even took her knife, and would have taken her leg, had Ahralree not intervened.

Voll, for his part, seemed completely enraged, refusing to look at her. She pleaded with him and raged at him, both in sending and speaking, until, finally, exhausted, she cried herself to sleep.

...

Wolfriders and Sun Folk alike woke to an oppressive heat, heavy and sodden. Rayek hissed, sticking slightly to Strongbow and Moonshade, who groaned miserably.

“It could be worse,” Moonshade said, as she withdrew from their sweat-sodden bed. “At least we're not One Eye.”

**One Eye has all the perseverance of a mayfly,** Strongbow said, tartly. **I'll bet he's hiding in the creek bed.**

“Move,” Rayek said, pulling at the sheets and blanket. “Unless you want to sleep in this mess, again.”

He used his floating powers to help Strongbow lift himself up, and replaced the sheets and cushion covers.

“Do you think Rainsong will wash those for us, if we asked her?” Moonshade asked, quickly stitching up the sides of a small, light doeskin tunic, with a rather large front. “Maybe if I promise to finish this for her by tonight.”

“How did you have enough hide to make her a tunic, anyways?” Rayek asked, as he helped, or rather, urged, Strongbow back to bed.

Moonshade looked a bit sad.

“I was hoping to, that is, I know she and Woodlock prefer your people's way, but, I was hoping,” she bent over her work, the soft, blue hide coming together like magic, as if it were being shaped, rather than sewn. “I made all the other things her cubs were born in.”

But Moonshade would never presume, Rayek realized. She might be snippish, or rude, but she would never presume she was wanted.

She was alone, he thought, both she and Strongbow, as alone as he was, or had been, in their own way.

“It's the last storm before the Leaf-change,” Fog came in with her mother, and informed anyone who would listen of this information. “The heat will break open and rain everywhere. It's going to be so huge, the lake will overflow.”

Everyone smiled at her little stories. Strongbow, always sternly indulgent of children, nodded solemnly, but traded a smile with Rayek and Moonshade, over the little girl's head. Clearbrook clearly saw them, but ignored them, while she handed them the smoked fish One Eye had sent.

“He'd have come himself,” she explained, cocking a wry eyebrow. “But he's hiding in the creek, swears he won't come out until the heat's gone.”

**I told you,** was Strongbow's smug rejoinder, but Clearbrook just laughed.

“He and One Eye are agemates,” she told Rayek. “One Eye's always been a bit weak in hot weather, and Strongbow's never failed to tease him over it.”

“Papa should be careful, Mama,” Fog's breath was slightly laboured, but Strongbow had privately assured him that this was normal on a wet, hot day like today. “He might get hit by lightning.”

“Might he?” Clearbrook picked her little girl up as she left. “I'll tell him you said that.”

“Fog has a strange imagination,” Moonshade began to embroider a simple, whimsical design in silk on Rainsong's tunic. “A storm in this heat?”

Minyah, who came to see them with corn, redfruit, fire-fruits, and little Acorn, who was just starting to sit up and coo, agreed.

“Fog is a strange little child,” she said, wiping the sweat off her brow. “A storm, imagine.” “Uhn!” Acorn agreed, emphatically, as she gummed a sweet-root slice.

The day passed lazily for the most part, and Fog's predictions were forgotten after she and Clearbrook returned to their forest home. The sky was azure blue, heavy and low, and the green, golden day seemed reluctant to finish.

Lunch was cold leftovers and the fish that One Eye had sent.

“It's his own recipe,” Moonshade said. “He chooses the wood himself, and stands guard over it.”

**Won't even tell Scouter how to make it,** Strongbow sent. **But he said he'd teach Fog.**

“Fog's lungs won't stand for it,” Moonshade sighed. “Poor cub.”

She finished the tunic and took it to Rainsong.

As he rested with Strongbow, the other elf suddenly took on a serious turn.

**You're fond of her,** he sent, as they both watched her go. It was a lock send, nearly silent.

Rayek sat up straight, ready to deny, then he saw the look on Strongbow's face. It was strange, eager, yet fearful, fond, but also exasperated.

**I see you,** Strongbow added, almost shyly. **Around her. You're gentle with her. You're not gentle with anyone.**

Rayek wanted to deny it. He wanted to run away. He wanted to live at the bottom of the lake, just as long as he didn't have to have this conversation.

But he wasn't a coward. At least, he hoped not.

**She wouldn't mind it,** Strongbow said. **Most of the time, well, we're a bit overwhelming, both of us. It's why we fit so well together. But you're strong. Kind.**

Suddenly, as if he were piecing a child's toy together, a puzzler, maybe, another piece fell into place, a piece he hadn't known was there.

“I'm fond of,” he stumbled, uncertain what to say. “Fond of both of you.”

Strongbow's face was slightly pink, and he wouldn't look at Rayek.

**You're more “fond” of Moonshade,** he sent, and there were waves in it, bittersweetness that Rayek somewhat understood. **It's different for you with her.**

**And she likes you,** Strongbow said. **She thinks you're wondrous.**

Rayek thought of all the things he could say.

_“She only thinks that because you're here.”_

_“We were alone together.”_

_“We both missed you, more than words can say.”_

_“She's pretty and kind, and her eyes speak better than words and sending can. She's sharp and sweet, like the pink flowers that bloom and send out rich, sour-sweet fruit. She's moonlight and starlight, and your lifemate, and she waited for you, just for you.”_

Instead he said, “Moonshade wouldn't want to, um, share without you.”

Strongbow still wouldn't look at him.

“High ones, come out and look at the sky!” Moonshade came running in, beads clicking musically behind her.

Rayek and Strongbow looked out the window.

Fog's reputation was made that day.

The blue sky seemed to have disappeared in an instant. A black cloud, low and foreboding, had taken over, and the winds had come in, sweeping the heat away. All through the village, elves were tying down whatever could be tied down, stowing the rest in houses, and, in the gardens, harvesting whatever was ripe enough to be got.

“Get those tools underground!” Picknose bellowed at the smiths, who were moving in a practiced smoothness, hammers, chisels, and assorted unidentifiable things.

“Quickly, darlings!” Minyah supervised the harvest, Acorn in a sling on her back.

“Dart and Shushen are out on the lake!” Moonshade exclaimed, face even paler than usual.

“I'll-” Rayek began, but Strongbow cut him off.

**Briersting will take me.”

**It'll be swifter than you or Rayek running,** the archer shook off Moonshade's protests. **I'll be right back with him.**

With that, and a shake of his wolf's tail, he was gone.

Moonshade bit her lip worriedly as she watched him go.

“What did you two talk about?”

“Oh,” Rayek tried not to think about it. “Nothing important.”

...

_Heart to hear are lifemates bound, soul meets soul as eyes meet eyes. Maiden 'mongst those gathered round, stands your new love-_

Shen Shen cut off her childhood self, and the old chant about eyes and souls. In childhood, Recognition had meant less to do with children, and more to do with love. The idea of Recognition without love would have been alien to the child Shen Shen, who danced and clapped to the rhythm and rhyme of the song as easily as she had to “The Cat In The Garden” and “Gathering Eggs”.

She wondered if she was still pregnant. More than one woman at Red Mountain had lost her baby after a fall like that. She might be miscarrying without even realizing it.

The thought came with ambivalence, as she woke up a little more.

Then she heard it.

It was a song, a murmur, a cry. It was the hearth at nightfall, Osek and Ahleki waiting with dinner. It was her parents' long gone hut, beads clattering in the doorway as she came in, Leetah turning with Mother and Father to greet her.

**You see, Shen Shen?**

Voll's back had lost its angry straightness, and he was twisted on Tenspan's harness, beaming at her.

**Do you feel it? The lost home of our mothers and fathers, calling us home!**

It was calling them. It wanted them, needed them.

Shen Shen found it only made her angrier.

**I have a home,** she sent. **One I would have gladly shared with you. This place is just a trap. A pretty, ancient trap.**

Voll laughed, and it echoed through her soul, reminding her of that dreamlike daze of those first few days, that soft, gentle touch, even on her leg and ear.

**Wait. Soon we shall rest in the first home, in that one place where all elves are welcome. Your heart-daughter, too, she shall see it, and Osek shall return to it. All elves will, and we will at last be rest-**

He was cut off. Tenspan spasmed mid-wingbeat, and Shen Shen screamed as a huge, metal pike seemed to appear from nowhere, cutting through elf and bird, narrowly missing her in her silken prison.

“Voll!”

She screamed as the bird went down, slamming hard enough into powdery snow that she was thrown from the shelter, landing next to a jagged rock that narrowly avoided cutting her head open. She used it to cut the ropes from her hands, watching as the Gliders floated in, all of them frozen in shock, drifting like snowflakes on the wind.

“Voll!”

She ran to him, still impaled on the giant spear, wrapping her arms around him.

**Voll.**

He smiled weakly at her.

**See?**

His sending voice was fading, nearly silent, and she realized, with some surprise, that she was weeping.

**Don't leave me,** she pleaded. **Don't go.**

**Don't cry, Shen Shen,** he raised a trembling hand to wipe her tears and she caught it, pressing it to her face. **We'll meet again, in the-**

And he was gone. Just like that.

She screamed, enraged and sorrowful, and clung to him for a moment, like a child.

Someone cried out.

She leapt up.

A Glider whose name she didn't know died, cut in half, face open in shock, and behind her, there they were.

Huge, green, and smiling with with sadistic glee, the trolls seemed to grow like fast-flowers after the floods, appearing from unknown caves and holes in the ground. When Gliders tried to fly, they through out nets, arrows and spears.

Voll had had her knife. Shen Shen took it back and stood, waiting.

The trolls advanced swiftly, with a grace and power that defied their bulk. They cut through the Gliders like lizards in a flock of insects, leaving death in their wake.

**Chosen, take up spears!** Shen Shen sent, and when a troll leapt on her, she got lucky, and stuck her knife in his eye, as far as she could, until he screamed, garbled, and fell. Then she took up his spear, and kept sending.

**Fly, all of you, as swiftly as you can, but those who can, fight. Take them up with the hawks, and throw them down! Anyone with a spear, or bow, or whip, strike as hard and as fast as you can!**

She didn't have time to hate herself, to think of the Voll, or the troll she left behind. She stabbed, clumsily, and struck out, and begged the High Ones, Naksima's Eagle-Woman, and life itself, to give her one moment, and another moment, and another.

She fought for Ahleki, for Osek, for her unborn, unnamed baby, and for the Gliders, the stupid, naive Gliders, who were beginning to rally, using rock-shaping and plant-shaping, firemaking, and even floating to their advantage. She fought for each moment, and then for another.

Then, as if she were dreaming, hooded figures appeared over the peak. One after another, small, slight, with pink skin that showed through furred jackets and hoods, on deer with pointed antlers, carrying spears, and bows, and daggers at least as long as those that hung on the belts of the trolls.

They fought like three times their number, the strangers, and they laughed as they fought, and joked. They fought, while babies clung to their backs, and children, on their own deer, ran through the battle, crowing. They fought, and died, and they pushed the trolls back.

**My lady!**

It was Ahralree, and a whole flight's worth of Gliders.

**These are all the lifters that yet live,** she gestured to one side, then to the other. **And all the shield-makers. Give the command, and we will lift everyone who can't float, and shield all. The Palace still awaits us, over the mountain.**

The Palace, Shen Shen thought. At least that would offer a moment's respite. Shield-makers? Would that mean some protection?

If only Voll had thought to fly with them in the first place.

She dismissed the thought, stabbing another troll.

**You didn't need to wait for my command,** she snapped. **But you have it! Do it now!**

They must have made a strange picture. Elves, birds and deer simply floating away, like grass seeds, as the Eight pushed everyone into place, herding them more and more tightly together. Shen Shen felt herself being floated towards Aroree, and gratefully settle side-saddle behind the other maiden.

**We're going to the Palace!**

The glad cry went up from Glider and stranger alike, the newcomers doffing their hoods, and laughing and cheering.

“Bet you're glad we managed to make it to that peak,” a pretty-strongly featured maid said, as she clung to Tyldak, sharp green eyes full of laughter.

“Just as glad as you must have been,” Shen Shen returned, sharply.

The other elf only laughed, urging Tyldak higher and higher.

The Palace call grew stronger. Shen Shen sighed, and leaned her head against Aroree's back.

There was something familiar in the call, now, but she was too tired, body, mind, and heart, to examine it.

There was one more mountain to go over. Just one more.

 


	5. For thou art with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know what's going on here. Shen Shen is a bit unrealistic, but I've made her so miserable she deserves a few things going right.

...

The thing which had been an elf knew very little now.

It knew that it had once been loved, been cherished. It knew there had been a much taller, adoring brother, and parents who were little more than the memory of loving hands. It knew that those had vanished one day, by its own fault, and that friends had slipped away, piece by piece. It knew when it was cold, or wet, or hungry, and when it was fed, or warm.

It was fed consistently. It was seldom warm.

But now? Now it was warm, very warm, cradled in gentle arms. There had been a freezing chill, then hands had picked it up, picked it up gently, and a voice had murmured, “Poor thing.”

There had been a rough, kind sympathy in the voice, and the thing which had been an elf felt itself turn to the warm, and the kindness.

Then there had been voices, wild shouts, and cries, then floating, weightlessness, and the thing which had been an elf never wanted it to end, and it didn't, and suddenly. Suddenly.

Suddenly it was an elf again, it was an elf, Mekda, and she flew through the air, far beyond the speed of her newfound fellows, as if she were a breeze herself, as if she were a star falling in the sky, as if she were a beam of light.

She stood before a door in a huge wall, which had no beginning, no end, and she waited.

She knew this place, she realized. She had been here before, with friends, and she had used her magic to enter, and-

The older brother flung open the door. Ahsharek, she remembered, and the parents, now much more than kind hands, and she flew into their arms, and began her story.

She had been gone such a long time, after all.

...

The lake was full of waves. Capped in foam, they dashed themselves to pieces at the edges, tugged fiercely at the lilies and reeds, and tossed the little water-leaf in their midst.

_“Moonshade wouldn't want to, um, share without you.”_

Strongbow mulled it over, watching Dart and Shushen stick their paddles in the water, fighting it, but with confidence. He wasn't worried. Even if the thing turned over, he'd taught Dart and Shushen to swim from the rapids near the Wildflow to the mild river that fed into this same lake.

Moonshade never shared. Neither did he. Not together. They had tried, once, together. Amber had left the tribe, hidden herself away, for turns and turns of the seasons. Her existence had almost been forgotten, until Brownberry had returned, carrying a younger sister with eyes the same gold as their mother, to raise as her own, with her new lovemate. No one knew who the true sire was, but there had been no mistaking the origin of those eyes. Nor had they ever seen Amber again.

No one blamed them. But they had never even thought of sharing again.

Dart and Shushen were pushing forward, soaked, and mud covered, and laughing, defiant of the wind and the waves. Moonshade had taught Dart to swim. Strongbow hadn't been able to. Finally, they came to shore, dragging the water-leaf behind, above the reach of the lake, where it rocked in the wind.

“Did you see that, Strongbow?” Shushen leapt onto Runrabbit behind Dart as easily as if the young wolf had bonded to him, too. “We almost overturned three times, but we held it steady.”

**You should have left the water as soon as you saw the first clouds,** Strongbow scolded them, but he could see by both cubs' cheeky smiles that he'd let some of his pride show through.

“Can Shushen have dinner with us?” Dart asked.

Letting Shushen stay for dinner meant letting him stay for the night, or possibly five.

**Alright.**

...

“That was well thought out,” Aroree said,softly. Shen Shen sat up, somewhat irritated.

“We would never have fought half so well,” the Glider continued. Her lip quivered, and she bit it. “Nor thought to, not without Lord Voll.”

Shen Shen privately thought the Gliders had all the brains of the fallen leaves they half-resembled, drifting this way and that in the wind. They let Lord Voll think for them, and she was sure he had let Winnowill think for them as well. Which would have been well and good if they had all stayed in the mountain.

They were like mushrooms, rather than leaves, Shen Shen decided, unkindly. Thriving in the dark, on rotten things and waste. Bring them out to the light, and you'd best eat them before they shriveled away.

The trolls were still flinging projectiles at them, but now they bounced off the shield. The new elves, led by a maiden named Kahvi, mocked the trolls, which Shen Shen couldn't think helped the situation, but there was something about the rough and ready way they hurled insults down that made her think they had a history there.

“We'll need more than quick thinking,” she said, firmly. “Even if we get over the mountain, we'll have no way to get back. And does the p-palace have food, water? We might starve to death before the trolls get us.”

Aroree fell silent, but one of the strangers spoke, a weather beaten female elf with steely grey hair.

“Just to see it will be enough,” she said, stroking the neck of the deer she was riding, trying to soothe its panicked writhing. “All these turns of the seasons hearing the call, then to have it cut off. We're desperate for it now.”

“Cut off?” Shen Shen asked, curiously.

“A few days ago,” the maiden told her. “The sun was setting and the call stopped. Then, just before the sun went behind the mountain, the call came back, but louder than before.”

A few days ago, Blue Mountain had been destroyed, along with eights upon eights of elves.

Shen Shen shivered, and looked to the north.

...

The consciousness felt the pull of the ancient homeworld increase, and analyzed. There was a new voice, among the many, singing, calling, cajoling. She recognised it, an ancient friendship, a straight back, a firm, determined set to his lips.

Voll! The savage had caused his death, too, set him and the rest of the Gliders on the path to their final destruction.

That too, he would pay for.

...

Naksima woke Ahleki and Shenkir up early, while the sun was just prodding at the tips of the mountains and the treetops. The fire was already glowing, Osek was still asleep, and breakfast, a pot of berries, small cakes, and the leftovers from last night, was ignored in favour of hurrying out the door as quickly as possible. Naksima carried a small bundle, and made them wash before they left, but that was their only delay.

They trotted through the grey light of morning, making small, sleepy greetings to other early risers. The dew was wet on the ground, soaking their feet and the hems of their clothes.

Naksima stopped them at the foot of the Eagle Woman's Cliff, under the great, masterful painting of the goddess, and the smaller, less skilled drawings that children sometimes left, while their parents prayed and made offerings.

Naksima opened the bundle, spreading it out on the ground, and took out a fan made from an eagle wing, a bundle of cedar, and a bowl of coals. She laid the cedar on the bowl and fanned them with the eagle wing, until smoke began to rise from the bundle.

Naksima had been smudging Ahleki since she was a small baby, so now she and Shenkir both knew to waft the smoke into their hair and over their bodies. The sharp, soothing scent of the cedar filled them all, and soon they were all ready.

“Eagle Woman, mother of the mountains and daughter of the sky, sister! Your daughter Shen Shen is on a long journey, and we, her family, are awaiting word of her. Send the winds to her, and let them bring news back to us!”

They waited at the bottom of the cliff, until the cedar burnt itself out.

“There.” Naksima stood up and shook out her skirts. “We've done all we can do. We'll just have to wait.”

She bundled up the fan, and the bowl of coals, and they turned to go back. Ahleki happened to glance back, over her shoulder.

“Naksima!” She whirled into the air as she spoke, pointing upward to the peak. Naksima and Shenkir followed her gaze.

A lone eagle flew over them, to the north and west.

...

The Palace shone like a great, glowing jewel. It was all graceful lines, spirals and curves, within a metal shell, still unfinished.

The shield-makers and the floaters worked together to smash the few trolls within the great, metal dome against the wall, and they had a moment's respite to allow the rockshapers to shape a hole large enough to allow the entry of nearly two eights fully and half grown giant hawks, and all the elves and deer, then to seal it up behind them.

It was silent inside, silent, and warm. The children laughed and ran through the halls, while their elders trailed behind, and the Gliders, more wary, flew ahead.

Shen Shen took a few shaky steps, then collapsed on a bench, the only one left unturned in a circle of furniture. Behind her, the leader of the new elves was speaking with Tyldak. Her name was Kahvi, and she was bluff and cheerful, almost callous.

“And the little curly one? She's your old chief's lifemate?”

“It was Recognition,” Tyldak intoned, probably not realizing how cold his voice was.

“That old thing?” Kahvi probably didn't realize how far her voice carried. “My people did away with it long ago!”

They had the right of it, Shen Shen thought, if it was true. This entire endeavor might never have occurred if she hadn't Recognized Voll. He would be alive, Blue Mountain might not have fallen. They would all still be alive, because despite the moment's respite they had bought, despite the beauty of the Palace, the trolls waited outside, an army full of them. They had no food, no water. They wouldn't die immediately, but in stages. First the children, then the Gliders, then the newcomers, then her, but perhaps not, because for some reason she hadn't yet learned to die.

One of the strangers sat down on the other side of the bench, grunting with a kind of pained exhaustion, and looked inside the sacklike bundle he'd been carrying.

“Well, that's that,” He set it down with a shrug. Shen Shen reached idly down to pull the folds of cloth apart, and gasped when she saw what they revealed.

“Mekda!”

Perhaps, had she not immersed herself so fully in Osek's sending images of his old friends, he might not have recognised the face, which, by now, was little more than a skull, missing ears, eyes, teeth, skin stretched starvation tight over bones.

But those bones spoke of a delicate shape, of loveliness denied by abuse and deprivation, that shone through even in death.

“You know it?” The stranger asked, shrugging off his jacket, to reveal a mangled arm, not cut off, but certainly not entirely useful. “It wormed its way up under our floor, came with every troll on the mountain. Wanted to ask it why.”

“Her name was Mekda,” Shen Shen told him, folding the cloth tenderly back around the body. “And by this time, I doubt she could have told you anything. The trolls had her since she was a child, in the time of the High Ones.”

She stood and left him, now looking at his bundle with more respect.

The Palace was beautiful, no denying it, but it was an otherworldly beauty, strange and almost artificial. Shen Shen limped heavily from room to room, this one crowded with elves, oohing and ahing over the strange objects within, that one empty, colours swirling in an ever changing pattern.

**We're going to die here, Voll,** she locksent to the empty air. **We're going to die, and Ahleki will wonder where I am and Osek will never know what became of Mekda, and that's that.**

**Shen Shen.**

She was answered, not by Voll, but by a voice she had never heard in life, not in sending, a voice she hadn't heard in nearly eight years, and she whirled.

Not solid as life, but certainly there, Marek stood, and Ahkren, both as lovely as ever, with their long, black hair floating in non-existent wind.

“Do I dream?” She whispered, unwilling to believe her eyes. “Or have I gone mad?”

**Shen Shen,** Marek gestured, vaguely, about herself. **You must take the Palace to Ahleki. It is her birthright.**

“Oh?” Shen Shen decided to relax into her madness, since there didn't seem to be any escaping it. “And how do you propose I do that? Have every hawk take a handful and fly home, over the mountains?”

**Hawk, no,** Marek shook out her shining tresses. **Fly, yes.**

**The Palace can take you where you wish to go,** Shen Shen whirled at that familiar voice, and saw Voll, smiling, serene as if he had no taken his people, her, and their unborn child into the middle of a massacre, and left them there. **It has no limitations.**

**Perhaps not,** she snapped back at him. **But I have mine, and you've pushed me past them.**

He didn't seem the least bit disturbed or interested in her feelings, in death as in life. No concern at all for her thoughts on any matter.

But then, who knew more of the Palace than him, supposedly the child of the High Ones themselves?

**I'm listening,** she relented.

Later, she would be told, she had returned to the group as if in a trance, and summoned Petalwing to her in a tone that anyone who had spoken with her for a few hours would have known was foreign to her. Short, calm words, and Petalwing had obeyed, instantly.

To her, it was like a dream, the kind of flying dream that babies had. Warm sun flowing over her, bright, dry air. She was walking on a garden path, but the gardens were empty. Then, turning a corner, she was in the Palace again, in a strange bright room.

**Raise it.**

She looked around. The room was empty, save for a large chair, set before an odd pair of statues, occupied by a strange creature, tall, with a pointed head, and large, pupil-less eyes.

**How?**

**By your will,** the creature stood from the chair, and gestured.

Shen Shen approached, hesitantly, and sat down.

**What do I do?**

**Where do you want to go?**

Home, she thought, and the statues began to move. As if written in fire, Sorrow's End appeared, at the Festival Of Flood And Flower, blossoms gaily covering it, maidens and lads dancing together, Leetah at the centre, Shen Shen off to the side, watching. Shen Shen swallowed some tears. There was no tinge of jealousy as there had used to be. Only desperate loneliness.

**That is a place lost in time,** the creature told her, kindly. **I cannot advise a return there.*

And then Sorrow's End as she had last seen it, the few remaining huts abandoned, empty. The fallen mountains, covering the rest of the village, the sickly, dying spring of water.

No, that was not a place to return to. It was as dead as Voll, as Marek.

Where, then?

Blue Mountain, but as she had last seen it, a jagged mouth in the earth, as torn and broken as her home.

The Red Mountains.

Ahleki and Shenkir, dancing about the centre of the village, holding court as they always did, the nephew of the chief, his heir, and the daughter of the mysterious elf midwife. Osek, adding a new room onto a house, or shaping a seam of copper out of the mountains, pausing to smile his kindly smile. Nilma, carrying a basket, her thick, powerful legs moving with a deceptive grace and speed, as she hurried from one task to another, never still. B'rak, always grave, even at festivals and dances. Amrok, with a new leg, or fingers, or a hand, always trying to improve the limbs he made, even when she told him she was satisfied just to walk again.

Naksima, turning to laugh at Shen Shen, urging her to sit down, to rest, to take this cup of tea, or eat these fruits, or just to look at the mountains. To dance at festivals, even though she didn't know the steps. To tell the stories of Sorrow's End, and to learn the stories of the Red Mountain people. To simply be, to simply live.

Naksima, who had welcomed her in. Given her a new home, among ancient enemies.

The Red Mountains, and the small meadow just outside her and Naksima's doors.

It formed in the fire of the statues, and the creature nodded.

**That will do.**

He turned to her.

**Now focus all your desire upon it, all your heart. Allow us to provide the rest.**

She nodded, trembling with a longing she hadn't dared to feel in all this strange, wonderful, terrible time.

They told her later that she had opened a room, a place that the Gliders called the Chamber Of The Scroll, and a brush of her hand had removed the room's only occupant, a long dead creature in broken preserver webs. That she had seated herself upon the chair, and the Scroll had begun to move. To show first Sorrow's End, hale, then broken, the crater that had once been Blue Mountain, then Red mountain, Ahleki, Naksima.

There had been cries of alarm from the entrance. The trolls were at the door, pounding it with metal and stone. No one knew who much time was left.

The Palace shook, shivered, and began to rise. It rose, and rose, above the enraged, terrified trolls, above the metal dome, above the jagged peaks of its accidental landing site. It rose and it began to fly.

In flight, it met a large eagle. It did not know this. It knew very little of the energies of the world it had found itself on.

The eagle landed on a cedar. She watched the strange ship fly to the east, so swiftly it left a trail of light in the sky.

And perhaps, just perhaps, on a cliff, on this plane, or another, a woman, who was something like an eagle, and something like not, who may have accepted a gift of smoke and prayer, saw through the eyes of the bird, and nodded to herself, satisfied.

...

The consciousness felt the Palace awaken. Awaken further, that was. It began to move, and that, too, the consciousness felt. It began to pull the consciousness back again, but she refused, unique in all her kind, in her ability to go where she pleased after shedding her mortal shell.

She was on the trail. The child had left it so clearly, after all, that it still blazed in the spiritual world, bright blue and white gold, showing the way.

She felt them, the savage, the mirror to her own soul, the child, and the elderly mystic. Felt the little village, too, the small outlying settlements. She found her target, swiftly, and flew, laughing at the delicious irony that she, like his arrows, would strike to the heart. His heart.

...

Night was coming on. It came quickly in the mountains, the sun always darted quickly down, as if afraid she had overstayed her welcome. Ahleki didn't remember, really, the way the days seemed to last forever on the plains, but she resented the loss of it all the same. She wasn't the type to be satisfied with anything. Shen Shen despaired of it, and Ahleki despaired of Shen Shen understanding, really understanding her.

Sometimes, when everything felt too hard, when nothing made sense, Ahleki spitefully thought, and sometimes spitefully said, that her real mother would have understood her. Her real mother would have known just what to do.

She was remembering, while she swung in her bed, that Akrom had made from hide, stretched lightly on a willow frame, suspended from loops of stone that Osek had shaped in the ceiling, with curtains of grasses that Shen Shen had woven, soft, rabbit hide blankets, and zwoot fur coverlets, likewise Naksima and Shen Shen's work, every time she had ever said it, exaggerating the times she had said it, and the way Shen Shen's face had simply gone blank, and she had walked away from Ahleki, and feeling self absorbedly sorry for herself, wishing she could take them all back.

She was thinking of that, and of Shen Shen spinning her in the air like a toy, and of Shen Shen trying not to laugh when she did ridiculous things, and of Shen Shen making her favourite food as only she could, and of Shen Shen being Shen Shen, warm and herself.

She vowed, in a thousand childlike ways, to be more attentive, to be better behaved, to not fly so high, to do her chores, and to eat all her dinner, if only Shen Shen would return, and hold her and scold her.

She fell asleep to this solemn, impossible vow, in the dark of the mountains, wrapped warmly in blankets, pillowing her head on her own skinny arms, making a dent in her cheek where it rested on Shen Shen's golden headband.

She awoke to the dawn, which, rather than its usual grey light, was shining in pinks and golds into her window, into her bed. She sighed, and sat up, rubbing her eyes.

It was so strange, that shimmering light, so bright. Perhaps the sun was affected by the fall of the mountain as well. Ahleki hated that mountain. Ahleki hated those elves.

She rose up, floated down from her bed, and washed her face, glancing out as she did.

Then she screamed, because, after all, she was only a little girl.

...

The storm raged on outside. Moonshade was laughing at Shushen and Dart as they told her how they came to shore, exaggerating both their bravery and the danger. Strongbow was asleep again, as if the ride had taken all his energy, hands buried in his wolf-friend's coat. Said wolf-friend, and Moonshade and Dart's as well, were making the whole hut stink of wet wolf, but Rayek had put some herbs on the fire, which somewhat alleviated the problem.

“Enough, enough!” Moonshade put her hands over Dart's mouth. “I can't bear to hear anymore. I'm glad you're both alright after your ordeal. Now eat a little.”

Dart and Shushen shared their dishes, both the raw meats and fruits that Dart's parents insisted he eat, and the food that Maleen had brought for Rayek. Dart even chewed the meat for Shushen, his sharp teeth making short work of it.

Moonshade lay back, and sighed deeply. Rayek thought she looked exceptionally lovely, skin glowing in the firelight, and eyes shining as she looked about the room.

The storm made the dark blacker, somehow, save for the skyfire, that struck joyously at them, all noise stifled save rain and thunder. Briersting whined, and Strongbow moved in his sleep to wrap an arm around the wolf.

“I'll light the lamp,” Moonshade said, as the fire began to die, and it grew a bit darker. “Who would have thought it would be so dark, tonight?”

“It's cold, too,” Dart complained, from the sleepy pile he and Shushen had arranged for themselves. “How did it get so cold?”

It was cold. Rayek threw another log on the stove, closing the door and watching it burn through the clearstone on the door. It wasn't just the damp, now, there was an almost winter-like chill in the air.

Moonshade smiled, and threw a blanket at her son, who made a cocoon for himself and his friend. Thunder shook the ground, but the roof stayed where it as, and the rain made shimmering lines against the windows.

Rayek put another log on the fire. It was getting colder.

Moonshade cried out.

“Rayek!”

He turned.

The darkness had taken form, an odd, flowing form, a woman. She was all darkness, with white arms and face, mouth open in a chilling grin.

He had seen this before.

He knew her. He knew her.

Dart and Shushen woke up to Moonshade's cries, and made ready to run to her, only to be stopped by Rayek's outstretched arms.

“Stay back,” he told them. “She'll hurt you, too.”

“But mother-”

Rayek broke through Dart's objections.

“She'll be alright. I'll take care of it.”

Where was Strongbow? Was he sleeping through this, or had the evil one taken him, too?

“Rayek!” Moonshade was writhing in pain, with the darkness over her. “Help me!”

**Help her, my dark brother?** The form, nothing like an elf, turned, smiling. **No! End her! End all of them, inferior, beast blooded creatures. They will destroy you, as they destroyed me, and mine. End them, end all of it.**

**You destroyed yourself,** Rayek told her, trying to remember how he had taken in the spirits of her victims. **In trying to end him, you ended yourself.**

**Liar!**

Moonshade was shivering, perhaps in too much pain to speak. Whatever the spirit was doing, she was doing it quickly.

Then he saw Strongbow.

He had been reaching for Moonshade, and had fallen first. Rayek shook, remembering what Moonshade had said about outliving her lifemate.

And a small, selfish part of him began to wonder what it would mean. For him.

**Ah, my dark brother,** the spirit laughed. **I meant to burn her out, but I think I'll make a gift of her instead!**

She moved again, and Moonshade screamed, face going white, as if she were freezing to death.

Rayek put aside thought, put aside method, and simply reached. He found himself swallowing the spirit, as if she were water, taking her inside and tamping her down, wrapping her in chains, and burying her.

“Mother!” Dart was at Moonshade's side.

Strongbow was moving, not to Moonshade, but rather in stumbling, shaking steps to Rayek's side.

He took Rayek's chin in his hands and stared into his eyes. Rayek felt the spirit within him stir and shut her further away.

**What have you done?** Strongbow asked.

“I- I don't,” Rayek stood, and stumbled backward, toward the door. Strongbow wasn't yet strong enough to follow, but Shushen moved to stop him, and Rayek pushed him away.

“Don't touch me!”

“There's a storm out there,” Dart said, voice soft, but firm. “You'll be no good to anyone if you get hit by skyfire.”

“Lightning,” Rayek corrected him, absently, but, in acknowledgment of the other elf's logic, he sat down. “It's lightning, Dart.”

Moonshade was beginning to move, moaning. Strongbow went to her side, held her hand, but cast concerned glances over his shoulder at Rayek.

“I'll run and get Leetah,” Dart said, as his mother began to come around. “As soon as the storm is over.”

**I'll send to her,** Strongbow said. **It's faster.**

Rayek watched them, and pushed the spirit, already trying to break free, further down.

...

The entire village spilled out to see what was happening, as Osek and Naksima ran out of their huts, children in hand.

The thing, the structure, or whatever it was, was shimmering, luminescent, and spilling out all manner of creatures, well, three kinds at least, elves, like Osek and Shen Shen, birds big enough to make two mouthfuls of B'rak, and odd, almost webfooted deer. Some of the elves were small, some were taller than the tallest of the humans, and they all took a defensive posture against the village, a few even flying like Ahleki, into the night sky.

The deer were nervous and twitchy. The birds were fairly phlegmatic, and mostly seemed curious about their new environment.

“Let me through!” A familiar voice rose over the nervous talking, the bleating of the deer, and the soft chirping. “Put those down, you idiots, and let me through!”

“Mama!” Ahleki shrieked, and flew out of Osek's arms, nearly knocking Shen Shen down in her eagerness to get to her. “Mama Shen Shen! Mama!”

“Oof!” Shen Shen put a bundle she was carrying in one hand to the side, wrapping her other arm around Ahleki. “Hello, dear one. Were you a good girl?”

“Of course I was,” Ahleki lied cheerfully. “What did you bring me?”

“Brat,” Shen Shen giggled, then turned, so she and Ahleki could observe the building together. “It's called a Palace. It was the home of the very first elves, the High Ones. Do you like it?”

“I don't know,” Ahleki frowned. “It feels funny.”

“Why don't you have a look, then?” Shen Shen asked, launching her into the air. “Tell me what you think?”

“Okay,” Ahleki said, dubiously, before swirling around a tower.

Shen Shen held the bundle tightly as Osek approached, then carefully pulled the folds of the blanket back.

Osek stared down at the sad, starved little features, and nodded.

“I know I promised to lay her back in your arms,” Shen Shen said, softly. “But she was already...”

By days, only, if that. She had been waiting for him, for them all this time.

“It was my fault,” he said, softly. “My idea.”

Shen Shen shook her head.

“You were children, Osek. You had no idea what would happen.”

Osek looked unusually elderly in the strange light, and he stared at Shen Shen firmly, until the little woman dropped her eyes.

“Thank you for keeping your promise.”

She nodded, and they looked up, watching Ahleki dart around the Palace.

“Osek,” Naksima stared at the strange bundle. “Osek, what is that?”

“Oh,” Osek took Mekda from Shen Shen. “An old friend. She died on the way.”

Naksima's had to blink some tears away.

“Would you like to give her to the Eagle-Woman?” She offered. “I'm sure Lekshmi and the others would be happy to prepare her for the journey.”

Osek hesitated, then nodded.

“You know,” he said, thoughtfully. “I think she's had enough of being below ground.”

“Here,” Amrok reached over and took the tiny body into his arms. “Let me carry her, friend. It will be an honour.”

They walked away into the darkness together, to the bathhouse, and the centre hearth.

“As for you,” Naksima took Shen Shen into her arms and squeezed her hard enough to take her breath away. “You scared the life out of me! What's this I hear about you dropping a mountain on the Hoan G'Tau Shau?”

“Naksima, please don't tease,” Shen Shen pleaded, when she was able to breathe again. “It was awful. I wish I hadn't gone.”

“Mama!” Ahleki floated above their heads, then flew down to twine her hands with Shenkir's. “I want to go inside.”

“Of course, dearest.” Shen Shen answered, then looked at Naksima. “Do you want to come?”

Inside, uncomfortably surrounded by the crystals and bird droppings and deer droppings, and discarded jackets and weapons, and an occasional feather, the whole story came out. While Shenkir and Ahleki ran ahead, Shen Shen told of her journey, a perilous climb inside a mountain, her elderly suitor, and a mad, sad, bad witch who killed herself in an attempt to reach the stars. She talked about the journey to the mountains, and her many escape attempts.

They tired themselves out, and sat down on one of the curling benches, while Ahleki and Shenkir played a complicated game of tag.

“Shen Shen?” Naksima took her hand and looked into her eyes. “Are you sure? That is, how do you know if you're even pregnant? You said you were only with this Voll for a few days. It's possible, but...”

Shen Shen laughed, a bit sadly.

“Trust me, with elves,” she sighed, spreading her hands. “Most of the time, we just know.”

“I see.”

Naksima leaned back on her hands, and looked around the room. It was big, and it was pretty, but it lacked the comfortable wear of her hut, and while it was warm, there was no gentle scent of herbs and smoke. If anything, it smelled the same as any closed in cave on the top of the mountains, rather dry and empty.

“I don't know if baby-not works on elves,” she said, finally. “But if you want to try it, I'll ask Nilma to brew it for you.”

“No,” Shen Shen shook her head. “There are so few elves, and now even fewer. I can't.”

“I don't care how few elves there are,” Naksima told her. “There's only one Shen Shen, and she needn't be a prize bitch for anyone who wants puppies. That's not how the world should be, and I won't let it be that way.”

It's not fair to the baby, either, Shen Shen,” she added. “A child should be wanted, really wanted.”

Shen Shen began to cry, small, wracking sobs that shook her body.

“I think the baby will be wanted.” She said. “It already is. It's just- It isn't ideal. Any of it.”

Naksima thought of the firm, steady way she had knocked on Amrok's door, which had belied her shaking knees, and of a strange, hot night, when a tiny woman had scolded and coaxed her son into the world.

“Believe me,” she sighed. “It never is.”

Shen Shen took a deep breath, and stopped her tears.

“There's also the father,” she admitted. “This baby is the child of the chief of the Gliders. It might help them. Give them hope.”

Naksima took Shen Shen by the hand.

“If this baby helps anyone, it won't be because of the father.” She said, firmly, because she believed it and knew it. “It will be because of the mother.”

“Naksima,” Shen Shen embraced the other woman. “Thank you.”

Naksima held Shen Shen close and tried not to notice how small she was.

...

“Help Moonshade,” Rayek said, pushing Leetah away. She turned instantly to the other maiden, taking her in her arms.

Rayek buried the spirit deeper, ignoring how her gleeful spite turned to a reluctant admiration as Leetah examined Moonshade.

Leetah flinched as her power flared, and Rayek watched as she fell into deep concentration.

“What's happened to mother?” Dart asked, as if he could bear the silence no longer.

Leetah remained deep within her trance, and Moonshade awakened, looking about wildly.

“Dart!”

“Mother!”

He embraced her, which she returned, shakily, and some tension within Rayek released.

**Such a happy reunion,** the spirit remarked. **For two who are no longer mother and son.**

**Be silent,** he ordered the spirit, tersely.

“I can't smell you,” Moonshade was drawing back from her son, eyes a bit wild. “I can't smell my son. Leetah, what's happened to me?”

Leetah drew back, intense sadness and wonder on her face.

“Your wolf-blood,” she said. “It's gone.”

 


	6. My Cup Runneth Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short epilogue, wrapping things up.

...

Shen Shen had been right in her doubts. B'rak's face alone confirmed it.

Three elves was one thing. Put together, the Gliders and the Go Backs outnumbered the entire village. Her human friends were happy to offer food, and shelter, but not for long.

“Is there somewhere you can offer us?” She asked before B'rak could refuse, to avoid anyone's embarrassment. “A place where we can rebuild? We won't take more than that.”

B'rak immediately relaxed.

“I'm not positive,” he said. “But I've been thinking about it since word came about-um- about the mountain.”

Shen Shen smiled, and tried to ignore the tightness in her chest that came whenever she thought about the mountain.

“Those birds,” B'rak stroked his beard, clearly trying to hide some sort of excitement. “Do you think they could bear a man's weight?”

...

Leetah took some persuading, but a story gradually came out.

Rayek had heard the story of how the ancestress of all Wolfriders had become a wolf, given birth to a son, who had sired both the ancestors of the tribe and their constant companions, but he had never before considered the implications. That the price the Wolfriders paid for their connection to the beasts, and to this world, was so high appalled him, which made the creature within roil in self-satisfaction.

He stung her into silence.

Sharpened senses, sturdier bodies, a few minor difference in their minds, at the cost of an eventual deterioration of the body, of death. Like a sandcat, or a zwoot.

“Can you change it back?” Moonshade asked.

Leetah sighed.

“I'm not even certain how she managed it to begin with,” she admitted. “I have... considered the possibility, but it always seemed too complex. It was woven into even the smallest parts of the body.”

“Why would you want it back?”

Everyone turned to look at Rayek, and he had the sinking feeling that he had said something wrong, but he didn't know what it was.

“Moonshade, it was killing you,” he pointed out, then turned his eyes on the other elves in the hut, which was crowded with Treestump's little family, the Wolf chief, as well as Strongbow, Dart, and Moonshade. “You should all take it out. All of you, you're-you-”

“All things die,” Strongbow said.”The White-Cold comes after the leaves change, but the New-Green follows it.”

“Not us,” Rayek insisted. “Elves don't die.”

“We die,” Leetah said, softly, as she approached, running her hands over his head, and looking into his eyes. “By accident, or by violence. Illness. It's the way of life.”

Rayek remembered laughing green eyes, and bobbing curls. Gone forever, bones beneath stones.

The spirit stirred in him, roused by his thoughts and by Leetah's powers.

He pushed her down again, imprisoning her more deeply.

Leetah sighed, and dropped her hands.

“You have a most remarkable mind, my friend,” she said, softly. “But I am of no use here, either.”

Of course she wasn't. This wasn't an injury, this was his penance. He'd caused this nightmare, almost killed Strongbow, and Moonshade.

She and Strongbow were sitting together, him whispering in her ears, her staring far away, at nothing. Dart and Shushen were at a distance, Dart looking pained, while Shushen embraced him fiercely.

“I will do everything in my power to change this,” Leetah told Moonshade. “If it can be done, there must be a way to undo it.”

“Thank you,” Moonshade smiled, but it looked wooden.

Rayek stood up, and pulled a cloak around himself, grabbing his spear. He hadn't thought it through, though, and as he opened he door, the beaded curtain clattered.

“Rayek, where are you going?” Leetah asked. “You still need to rest.”

“Sit down,” Cutter tugged at his arm. “Better yet, lie down. Sleep, or something.”

“No!” Rayek pulled away, feeling the consciousness inside awaken again. “No sleeping. I can't, she'll escape.”

He made for the door again, this time lightly evading the Wolfrider's clumsy swipe.

“I have to get away. I have to-”

“Rayek, stop.”

It was Moonshade. She was standing now, dressed in a draping, heavy robe that seemed to have grown from the ground, to rise over her like flower petals. Moonlight purple, he thought, absently, and drank the colours in, the blues and pinks and lilacs.

“Stay,” she said.

**We'll help you,** Strongbow told him, firmly. **You keep guard on her during the day. I'll watch over her at nights. Until the time we can rid you of her.**

**We'll heal together,** Moonshade said, and took his hands in hers. **All three of us.**

“Alright,” Rayek said, tempted, by her eyes, and the way that Strongbow's face softened with delight when he gave in. “Alright, but not here. Not within the Village. Not in the Holt.”

“I know a place!” Dart exclaimed, with the enthusiasm of youth.

“It's on the other side of the lake!” Shushen added. “An old tree that grew into a cave, it's perfect!”

“Redlance can fix it up for us,” Dart picked up where his friend left off.

Rayek felt the spirit try to break free again, and, with a renewed strength, he pushed her down.

“It doesn't sound terrible,” he allowed.

Moonshade smiled, then looked around.

“We can take the bed, right?” She asked.

...

The mountains parted on the shores of a water so huge that Shen Shen, who had never seen the ocean before, knew it for Naksima's much touted Vastdeep water, a salty lake so huge that one could never reach the other side. Some of the sea had been permitted to flow inward, creating a smaller lake, and a mountain rose in the middle of it, with a single tall peak, and smaller hills that flowed off to one side, as if placed there purposefully.

B'rak directed them to a plateau on the mountain, and climbed down from the bird he'd flown on with Reevol, sighing and petting her neck.

“It was... Wonderful,” he sighed, then came back to himself, putting his hands on his hips and beaming.

“Do you like it?”

Shen Shen looked around.

It was green. Green, and even from here, she could see the berry bushes, spilling across the hills and little valleys. There were ferns, and she recognised good root, wind-blows-it, and all sorts of plants that Naksima and Nilma had introduced her to, edible mushrooms, fresh water flowing over into small, crystal streams, fish jumping in said streams, birds, a deer that leapt cautiously away.

“It's lovely,” she sighed. “Reevol, Ahralree?”

“They say a fire spirit lives in the mountains,” B'rak told them, smiling proudly. “Once, there were people here. The fire spirit had indigestion, and she threw up some hot rocks. The people thought it meant she was angry, and they made to sacrifice a young man, in order to appease her. The spirit was embarrassed by her illness, which made her sicker, and she shook the ground and vomited so much hot rock and steam up that the people left, all except the young man. He was handsome, as well as brave, and she fell in love him. They say he dwells with her in the mountain, with their little ones.”

Shen Shen looked at the mountain dubiously, but didn't want to contradict B'rak.

“Is it safe?” She asked him.

He shrugged. “There's still steam from time to time around the place, but we haven't seen more than that since the days of all my grandfathers.”

“There was a volcano at one time,” Ahrahlree said, softly. “But it's mostly dormant, now.”

She was speaking in the elfin tongue. Shen Shen smiled, as if a mere pleasantry had been exchanged.

“More deer here than I've seen following them for all my eights of years,” Urda exulted, not noticing the bemused looks the Gliders(who could count their ages by many times that) exchanged. “And did you see, Curly-top? Redsweets!”

“Oh, brightdrops,” Shen Shen looked over the small berries with interest. “That's what we call them, Naksima and I.”

“They're rare in the Frozen Mountains,” the Go Back elder told her. “But there's a whole field of them here.”

“Really?” Shen She laughed. “We'll make a lovely dinner out of them, then, with fresh deer.”

“And fish!” Kureel dove down into their little crowd, smiling. “There are fish here that are nearly as big as a tree, my lady.”

B'rak waited, back to his typical bemused impassiveness.

Shen Shen sighed, thinking of leaving her little house, of waking up in the morning and not simply running to Nilma or Naksima.

The world is change, she thought, change, or death. Death, then rebirth.

Lose your home, find new friends in old enemies. Lose your home, find yourself.

She looked at the mountain, and tried to imagine it full of birds, tried to picture the Palace, one more outcropping of rock against the sky. She peopled the mountain with Gliders and Go Backs, quarreling and laughing and dancing together.

Surprisingly, it wasn't a terrible thought. In fact, it seemed closer to what she had envisioned when she first set out on her little quest. A home full of elves, and a new life.

...

The leaves were beginning to change colour, Leetah noted, as they walked home, in the dying autumn light. The air was growing crisp, with a nip she was beginning to recognise.

She took Cutter's hand, impulsively.

“Can you forgive me?”

He blinked at the question, as if trying to remember what she was talking about, then shook his head.

“I don't think,” he said, slowly. “There's anything to forgive. I don't know how you could have begun to explain it. Or how it might have come up.”

“Besides,” he chuckled. “I never thought I'd live forever. Like my father always said, a Wolfrider's life is short and sharp.”

“Your father was wrong,” About this and so many other things. “Your life will be long, yours and Ember's and Skywise's. Long, and full of happiness.”

“Hm.” Cutter glanced at her from behind his sand yellow bangs. “I have to say the only thing I'll regret when it ends is leaving you. You're supposed to leave your cubs. Lifemates are another thing.”

A leaf shivered and shook loose from its branch, and fell in a swirling glide, to the soft earth.

By the end of autumn, the leaf would be indistinguishable from its fellows, falling one after another. In winter, they would be ground together by ice and snow. By spring, it would be back on the tree, traveling up from the earth through the roots. And again, and again. And when the tree fell, as they often did, it, too, would feed this forest.

Leetah would, barring any accident that took her by surprise, or any disaster that took her from here, see all this. See it over and over again, while all around her, elves fell like leaves, to be replaced, until her descendants scarcely recognised her as any sort of relation, looking on her as an honoured guest in her own home.

**I love you,** she sent to Cutter, who smiled, bumping her shoulder with his.

Another leaf fell.

...

Kahvi wasn't going.

“We were wanderers before we were Go Backs,” she told Shen Shen, cheerfully, having handed over some deer, and a few weapons, for supplies and new clothes. “The Palace is safe in the hands of elves again, so we're off.”

Shen Shen didn't know Kahvi well enough to be surprised by her. What was surprising was that only half the Go Backs were following her, the rest staying behind with the Palace, on the island. Also, in a shocking turn of events, nearly four eights of Gliders were going with her.

“Are you sure?” Shen Shen asked Yeyeen. The eldest among the Chosen was pale, with large, perpetually darting eyes, and tended to take flight when startled.

“I was born the same time as Tyldak,” she explained. “If he's going, so am I.”

Shen Shen watched her, uncertainly, as the crowd left, laughing and waving good bye.

The island was a day's walk away, time that B'rak claimed could be cut in a quarter by taking a somewhat risky river route. Some were opting to go that route, rather than risk another flight. Others were taking the great birds to their new home, to the relief of their hosts. Shen Shen was followed by Ahleki, Osek and a few Go Backs and Gliders, who looked at her with wide-eyed wonder.

I don't know what I'm doing, she thought, seating herself in the same chair, and seeing, as she had before, Voll and the stranger. They smiled calmly, but said nothing this time, so she closed her eyes, and saw before herself a mountain covered in forests, streams, leaping deer, and all things good, and wished herself as hard as she could.

“Wait!”

Naksima, Amrok, and Shenkir came running in, burdened down by packages and bags, and a few pieces of wood, half carved.

“Ahleki!” Shenkir ran over to his little playmate, grinning ear to ear. “We're coming with you!”

“What in the name of the moons?” Shen Shen asked, as Naksima unburdened herself, smiling broadly at all the astounded elves.

“We're going with you, of course,” Naksima hugged her again, grinning. “You got to live with my people, now I'm going to live with yours.”

“Naksima,” Shen Shen shook her head. “You can't just-”

“Why not?” Naksima put her bags down right beside the throne. “You did.”

“B-Because, it's not the same!”

“Not exactly. Shenkir, there.” Naksima pointed to a bench. “But it's close enough to make no difference.”

It did. Naksima didn't have to leave, wasn't being thrown out by the circumstances of nature.

She wanted to come. Because she was a friend.

Shen Shen felt her eyes begin to fill up with tears.

“Enough of that!” Naksima patted her shoulder. “Just make this thing fly. I want to see it.”

Shen Shen returned to the chair. She shut her eyes, and pictured a field, on a mountain. Green, green overflowing, and leaping deer. Rivers full of fish.

And a friend.

...

The star had streaked overhead in the night, so bright that the sky had gleamed a momentary pale blue. Having nothing better to do, the sentry for the tiny group of elves that had just left the foothills of the mountains had noted it for the next on watch, and they had all simply woken up and continued on their journey.

The young mother shifted her baby in her arms, rocking her with tender care.

“That's enough, Rel,” she said, crooning, for she had no better lullaby. Her own mother had never been tender, nor had any of her people truly known it. Even in love they were rough, both in hand and word. She did not know what it meant to be gentle.

Another mother, this one great with young, whimpered in her sleep, and there were those among them, not yet used to wolves, who drew back, cautious with the great beasts.

Vaya, daughter of Kahvi, grand-daughter(although she didn't know it) to Willowgreen, just leaned back against her comrade, who was still dirty, with matted grey fur, and sighed with weary satisfaction.

The baby stopped crying and stared about herself with the wonder of infancy. She had eyes, green, like her mother's, but unlike her mother, her eyes were green with the softness of upturned willow leaves, dancing in the wind. It was not the only thing she had inherited from her.

“Have you ever seen the plains before?” Marit asked Deshk. She had been born in the mountains, long after they'd decided to go back to the Palace, like Vaya herself.

“Once,” he said, voice soft with wonder. “In the winter. They were huge, covered with snow, stripped bare by the wind. Nothing like this.”

Nothing like the bright gold, red and brown ocean of grass they were walking on. The beasts were fat and delicious, the plants they knew were few, but grown to an enormous size. The rivers were few, meandering, and muddy.

They hadn't seen anything like themselves. Nothing like trolls, or even the few, nearly forgotten myths of humans that survived among them to this very day.

It was wonderful.

Vaya pressed Rel to her other breast, and let her eat to her heart's content.

She could do that, now. They had time. They had peace.

She looked out to the future, over the empty plains, and smiled.

 


End file.
